what it was she was missing. The other end of the table was
the carpenter's bench that they brought in out of the barn, and they put
the youngest and funniest papa at that. The tables stretched from the
kitchen into the dining-room, and clear through that out into the hall,
and across into the parlor. They hadn't table-cloths enough to go the
whole length, and the end of the carpenter's bench, where the funniest
papa sat, was bare, and all through dinner-time he kept making fun. The
vise was right at the corner, and when he got his help of turkey, he
pretended that it was so tough he had to fasten the bone in the vise,
and cut the meat off with his knife like a draw-shave."

"It was the drumstick, I suppose, papa?" said the boy. "A turkey's
drumstick is all full of little wooden splinters, anyway."

"And what did the mamma say?" asked the little girl.

[Illustration: "CAUGHT HIS TROUSERS ON A SHINGLE-NAIL, AND STUCK."]

"Oh, she kept saying, 'Now you behave!' and, 'Well, I should think you'd
be ashamed!' but the funniest papa didn't mind her a bit; and everybody
laughed till they could hardly stand it. All this time the boys were out
in the barn, waiting for the second table, and playing round. The
farmer's boy went up to his room over the wood-shed, and got in at the
garret window, and brought out the pumpkin-glory. Only he began to
slip when he was coming down the roof, and he'd have slipped clear off
if he hadn't caught his trousers on a shingle-nail, and stuck. It made a
pretty bad tear, but the other boys pinned it up so that it wouldn't
show, and the pumpkin-glory wasn't hurt a bit. They all said that it was
about the best jack-o'-lantern they almost ever saw, on account of the
long neck there was to it; and they made a plan to stick the end of the
neck into the top of the pump, and have fun hearing what the folks would
say when they came out after dark and saw it all lit up; and then they
noticed the pigpen at the corner of the barn, and began to plague the
pig, and so many of them got up on the pen that they broke the middle
board off; and they didn't like to nail it on again because it was
Thanksgiving Day, and you mustn't hammer or anything; so they just stuck
it up in its place with a piece of wood against it, and the boy said he
would fix it in the morning.

"The grown folks stayed so long at the table that it was nearly dark
when the boys got to it, and they would have been almost starved if the
farm-bo