“They didn’t exactly eat them,” said Polly, “at least not all the while; but they ate the things their father bought with the money he sold them for at the market.”
“Oh!—well, go on.”
“And every day all those children would climb up to all the windows in Farmer Stebbins’s house, and watch to see the pumpkins growing bigger. And the first thing they did in the morning was to run out and count them to see if anybody had run off with any in the night.”
“How many were there?” asked Van, bobbing up from his retirement.
“Sh!” cried Jasper.
“Oh! I don’t know; about a million, I suppose,” said Polly recklessly.
“O Polly Pepper!” exclaimed Percy in astonishment; “why, that can’t possibly be true.”
“Of course it isn’t,” said Polly coolly; “this is a make-believe story, you know.”
“And if you two chaps don’t keep still, you’ll get no story,” declared Jasper again. “Here’s Dick, now, is as quiet as a mouse. You might learn manners from him.”
“I want to hear Polly Pepper tell the story,” said little Dick, folding his hands tightly together.