"You didn't say it had any ears before," said the boy.
"No; it had them behind," said the papa; and the boy felt like giving him just one pound; but he thought it might stop the story, and so he let the papa go on.
"As soon as the grandmother saw it open its mouth that way she just gave one scream, 'My sakes! It's comin' to life!' And she threw up her arms, and she threw up her feet, and if the funniest papa hadn't been there to catch her, and if there hadn't been forty or fifty other sons and daughters, and grandsons and daughters, and great-grandsons and great-granddaughters, very likely she might have fallen. As it was, they piled round her, and kept her up; but there were so many of them they jostled the pump, and the first thing the pumpkin-glory knew, it fell down and burst open; and the pig that the boys had plagued, and that had kept squealing all the time because it thought that the people had come out to feed it, knocked the loose board off its pen, and flew out and gobbled the pumpkin-glory up, candle and all, and that was the end of the proud little pumpkin-glory."
"And when the pig ate the candle it looked like the magician when he puts burning tow in his mouth," said the boy.
"Exactly," said the papa.
The children were both silent for a moment. Then the boy said, "This story never had any moral, I believe, papa?"
"Not a bit," said the papa. "Unless," he added, "the moral was that you had better not be ambitious, unless you want to come to the sad end of this proud little pumpkin-glory."
"Why, but the good little pumpkin was eaten up, too," said the boy.
"That's true," the papa acknowledged.
"Well," said the little girl, "there's a great deal of difference between being eaten by persons and eaten by pigs."
"All the difference in the world," said the papa; and he laughed, and ran out of the library before the boy could get at him.