“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.
At last he grew so unhappy over it that the dancing little sunbeams noticed it. “What is the matter, little pumpkin?” they cried. “Why do you not hold up your head and look around as you used to do?”
“Because,” answered the little pumpkin, sadly, “I have to be a Jack-o’-lantern, and I don’t know how. All I know about is how to be a little yellow pumpkin.”
Then the merry little breezes laughed and laughed until they shook the vine so that all the pumpkins had to tighten their hold not to be shaken off. “Oh, little pumpkin!” they cried, “why worry about what you will have to do later? Just try with all your might to be a little yellow pumpkin, and believe that if you do the best you can, everything will be all right. We know a secret, a beautiful secret, and some day we will tell it to you.”
“Oh, tell me now!” cried the little pumpkin, but the sunbeams and breezes laughed together, and chuckled,
“Oh no, oh no, oh no! Just grow and grow and grow, And some day you will know.”
The little pumpkin felt comforted. “After all,” he thought, “perhaps if I cannot be a Jack-o’-lantern I can be a good pumpkin, and I am so far down on the vine perhaps Mother Vine won’t notice me.” He looked around, and saw that all his brothers and sisters were only little pumpkins, too.
“Oh, dear,” he cried, “are we going to disappoint Mother Vine? Aren’t any of us going to be Jack-o’-lanterns?” Then all his little brothers and sisters laughed, and said, “What do we care about being Jack-o’-lanterns? All we care about is to eat the good juice, and grow and grow.”
At last came the cold weather, and all the little pumpkins were now big ones, and a beautiful golden yellow. The biggest and yellowest of all was the little pumpkin who had tried so hard all summer to grow into a Jack-o’-lantern. He could not believe Mother Vine did not see him now, for he had grown so big that every one who saw him exclaimed about him, and Mother Vine did not seem at all disappointed, she just kept at work carrying the good food that kept her pumpkin children well fed.