It was Danny’s idea. Danny always had a great many ideas, and sometimes
they were good, sometimes they were not, as is apt to be the case with
people who have a great many of anything—especially ideas.
“It will be such fun!” said Amy.
“And something new,” agreed Janie.
“Who’ll cut the face?” asked Fred, who always wanted to know how things
were going to be done.
“Can’t you, Milly?” asked all the children at once. “Can’t you?” and they
all gathered round a little girl who was dressing a doll in an automobile
suit.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What kind of a face, and what
for?” She was fastening the odd lenses from two pairs of Aunt Mildred’s
spectacles into a wire frame for goggles for the doll.
“Why, a pumpkin face, to scare Uncle Ned! He always laughs at us if we
are afraid of anything.”
“If you will get the pumpkin—a nice large one—and will lend me your new
jack-knife, why, I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
Fred promised, and the rest of that day and the next the children spent
in preparation for Hallowe’en. Uncle Ned was a young lawyer in Boston,
but he came home Saturday nights to spend Sundays with Aunt Mildred, and
Hallowe’en happened to come on Saturday, which just suited.
Milly succeeded in making a very ugly face making enormous eyes and a
monstrous mouth, in which she managed to fasten two rows of corn grains
for teeth. Then, when the rest of the children were out playing, she
took her pumpkin head up into the attic, and hunted for other things to
complete its make-up. In an old trunk she found a heavy wig, and this she
fastened firmly on the head with some glue. When at last she showed it,
with its great shock of black hair, everybody agreed that it was ugly
enough to frighten anybody.
“He’ll think it’s a goblin,” said Milly, who had read a great many
fairy-stories.
“There aren’t any goblins,” said Fred, who was always practical.
In the evening, soon after supper, they all went out and stuck it up on
the end of a stray bean-pole, which they leaned up against the post of
the garden gate. Dave Peters gave them a candle, which they lighted and
thrust inside of the hollow head.
“Ugh, how ugly!” they said, and then went in the house to wait.
After a while Fred proposed going out to see how it looked again, and
every one of the children followed him. What if the candle should have
burned out or been blown out?
Fred gave a low whistle and stopped before he reached the gate, and all
the children called, “What’s the matter?”
There the ugly thing hung, the light shining through the big empty eyes
and grinning corn teeth, and just behind there was certainly a great
white something that looked like wings!
“What’s that white thing?” said Milly, in a frightened whisper, as she
clutched Fred’s arm.
“Let’s go back!” begged Amy and Janie.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Fred, boldly; but he did not move
a step nearer to the gate. “You are always so ’fraid of things!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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