"'If that's all,' says I, 'I'll try my luck ag'in to-morrow, and make jest the same, on'y scant the rice the least mite that ever was.' "'So do,' says Aunt Keziah. 'I rather guess you were a leetle too heavy-handed when you measured the rice.' "Well, I do declare that I didn't think of anything but that tarnal rice puddin' all the arternoon; and, the minute I fell asleep at night, rice puddin's were settin' round in every direction, jest as thick as a swarm of bees. Once I thought I went to draw a pail of water, when up came a bucket full of rice puddin'. Then, ag'in, I thought I was starchin' some of Aunt Keziah's best caps, and found I'd been dippin' 'em in a mess of rice puddin', instead of starch. That was the way I was tormented all night long. My sleep didn't do me an atom of good; but, arter breakfast, I brightened up a little, and felt detarmined in my own mind, if there was any sich thing as makin' a rice puddin' that would suit Uncle Higgins, I would do it. So I went to work, and, the land o' massy! if I should live to be as old as Methuselah, and forty years on to the eend of that, I shall never forgit how I fussed and worried over that 'ere puddin'. If I measured the rice once, I raly b'l'eve that I measured it half a dozen times, so that, at last, I got to be so addle-pated that I could 'ave hardly told B from a broomstick. "Aunt Keziah said there sartainly couldn't be any danger of its bein' too dry; and, if it erred a leetle bit on t'other hand, I could dip out two or three spoonfuls of the whey. "I don't know how the President feels to be at the head of government; but, if the affairs of the nation weigh as heavy on his shoulders as that puddin' did on mine all the time 'twas bakin', he'd soon give up beat. "There was never anything that looked a mite nicer than it did when I took it out of the oven. 'Twas enough to make a pairson's mouth water to look at it; but, the moment I put the tarnal thing into the deep, blue-edged dish, it looked 'xact as t'other did, on'y, if anything, a leetle more mushy, as Uncle Higgins called it. If there'd been time, I'd 'ave gone off by myself and had a good cryin' spell. It was my fairm belief that the puddin' was bewitched. What to do I didn't know. One minute I thought I'd put it on the table, and Uncle Higgins might eat some of it or not, jest as he was a mind to. The next minute, I made up my mind to hide it away, and not let him know that I'd made one. I was right in the midst of my quandary, when, the first thing I knew, Uncle Higgins walked into the kitchen, and marched right up to the table, where sot the puddin'. "'What do you call that?' says he. "'A rice puddin',' says I; and, judgin' by my feelin's, I turned all manner of colors.