Early candlelight stories

by Stella C. Shetter

“It was in the spring. The fish were biting fine, and one afternoon Charlie and I were all ready to go down to the deep hole under the willows to fish. Charlie had cut new poles and hunted up hooks and lines, and I had packed a lunch, for you do get awfully hungry sitting on the creek bank all afternoon. We were out behind the barn digging bait when Father came around the corner and saw us.

“‘I’ve just been looking for you children,’ he said. ‘I want you to take these pumpkin seeds down to the cornfield in the bottom and plant them.’ Then, seeing our fishing tackle, he added, ‘It won’t take long, and when you finish you may go fishing.’

“Of course Charlie and I were disappointed. We hadn’t been fishing that year yet. It had been a late spring, with lots of rain, and on the bright days there had been so many things that we could do around the house and garden that we couldn’t be spared to go fishing. And now, with everything all ready, to give it up even for an hour or two was a trial.

“We started for the cornfield, Charlie carrying the poles and the can of bait and I the lunch and the paper sack of pumpkin seed. The pumpkins we were to plant were to be used to feed the stock—cow pumpkins they were called, and they were big and coarse-grained and not good for pies.

“Well, Charlie and I started down at the lower end of the field and we planted a few seeds. But there was such a lot of the seed and the field was so big and the lure of the creek with the shade under the willows and the fish biting was so great that we could think of nothing else. We stopped to examine our bait to see if the worms were still living. When we went back to work Charlie wondered what was the use of planting so many old pumpkins, anyhow, when Father had already planted as many as usual in the upper cornfield.

“‘We might plant a whole lot of seed at once,’ he said, ‘but still it would take us a long time.’

“‘I know what to do!’ I cried, ‘Let’s hide the sack of seed in this old stump and come back tomorrow and plant them.’ After a few half-hearted protests from Charlie, this was what we did. We buried the sack of seed in an old, rotten stump, covered it deep with the soft, rich loam, and away we went to the creek to fish.

“Charlie baited both our hooks with the fishworms, and we would spit on our bait each time for luck. The charm must have worked, for when it was time to go home we had caught a nice lot of sunfish, tobacco boxes, silversides, and suckers. Truman cleaned them for us, and Mother dipped them in corn meal and fried them a golden brown. We had them for supper, and every one said how good they were and no one thought to ask us anything about the pumpkin seeds.

“I thought about them that night after I had gone to bed and wished that we had stayed and planted them as Father had told us to. But then Charlie and I would go down first thing in the morning, dig the sack out of the stump, plant the seeds, and everything would be all right.