girl.

"It certainly ought," said the papa. "But if nothing but it's grammar
had been bad, there wouldn't have been much to complain of about it."

"I don't suppose it had ever heard much good grammar from the farmer's
family," suggested the boy. "Farmers always say cowcumbers instead of
cucumbers."

"Oh, _do_ tell us about the Cowcumber, and the Bullcumber, and the
little Calfcumbers, papa!" the little girl entreated, and she clasped
her hands, to show how anxious she was.

"What! And leave off at the most exciting part of the pumpkin-glory?"

The little girl saw what a mistake she had made; the boy just gave her
_one look_, and she cowered down into the papa's lap, and the papa went
on.

"Well, they had an extra big Thanksgiving at the farmer's that day. Lots
of the relations came from out West; the grandmother, who was living
with the farmer, was getting pretty old, and every year or two she
thought she wasn't going to live very much longer, and she wrote to the
relations in Wisconsin, and everywhere, that if they expected to see her
alive again, they had better come this time, and bring all their
families. She kept doing it till she was about ninety, and then she just
concluded to live along and not mind how old she was. But this was just
before her eighty-ninth birthday, and she had drummed up so many sons
and sons-in-law, and daughters and daughters-in-law, and grandsons and
great-grandsons, and granddaughters and great-granddaughters, that the
house was perfectly packed with them. They had to sleep on the floor, a
good many of them, and you could hardly step for them; the boys slept in
the barn, and they laughed and cut up so the whole night that the
roosters thought it was morning, and kept crowing till they made their
throats sore, and had to wear wet compresses round them every night for
a week afterwards."

When the papa said anything like this the children had a right to pound
him, but they were so anxious not to have him stop, that this time they
did not do it. They said, "Go on, go on!" and the little girl said, "And
then the tables!"

"Tables? Well, I should think so! They got all the tables there were in
the house, up stairs and down, for dinner Thanksgiving Day, and they
took the grandmother's work-stand and put it at the head, and she sat
down there; only she was so used to knitting by that table that she kept
looking for her knitting-needles all through dinner, and couldn't seem
to remember