Once there was a little pumpkin that grew on a vine in a field. All day long the sun shone on him, and the wind blew gently around him. Sometimes the welcome rain fell softly upon him, and as the vine sent her roots deep down into the earth and drew the good sustenance from it, and it flowed through her veins, the little pumpkin drank greedily of the good juice, and grew bigger and bigger, and rounder and rounder, and firmer and firmer.

By and by he grew so big he understood all that the growing things around him were saying, and he listened eagerly.

“I came from the seed of a Jack-o’-lantern,” said this vine to a neighbour, “therefore I must grow all Jack-o’-lanterns.”

“So did I,” said a neighbour, “but no Jack-o’-lanterns for me. It is too hard a life. I am going to grow just plain pumpkins.”

When the little pumpkin heard he was supposed to be a Jack-o’-lantern, he grew very worried, for he could not see that he was in any way different from any ordinary pumpkin, and if Mother Vine expected him to be a Jack-o’-lantern, he did not want to disappoint her.