“How many are there of you?”

“O, a lot; but if I do get it, I shall ask for a goat and cart instead.  We have plenty of pictures at home, but we are much in need of a goat and cart.”

Peter had a peculiar habit, Ethelwyn afterwards told her grandmother, of shaking after she had talked to him awhile, and gurgling down in his throat.  She felt sorry for him.  “He was prob’ly not feeling well; maybe what Aunt Mandy calls chilling,” she said.

She found grandmother making pumpkin pies, for the minister and his wife were coming to dinner the next day.  Grandmother was famous for making pumpkin pies, and never allowed any one else to make them.

“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” she said, and Ethelwyn nearly fell off her chair trying to imagine grandmother’s grandmother.

“I shouldn’t suppose they would have been discovered then,” she said, after a struggle.  “Pumpkin pies don’t go out of style like clothes, do they, grandmother?”

“Mine never have,” said grandmother proudly.  “I suppose Mandy never makes pumpkin pies.”

“Yes she does, but they don’t grow in yellow watermelons; they live in tin cans.”

“Pooh!” said grandmother, “they can’t hold a candle to these.”

“No, but why would they want to?”

“Hand me that japanned box with the spices, please, dear.  Now you’ll see the advantage of doing this sort of thing yourself; here are mustard and pepper boxes in this other japanned box, but I know just where they always stand, so I could get up in the night and make no mistake.”

Just then grandmother was called away from the kitchen.

“Don’t meddle and get into mischief, will you, deary?” she said.  And Ethelwyn promised.

She intended to keep her word, but while she was smelling the spices, it struck her that it would be a good joke to season the pies from the other box.  “Like an April fool,” she thought; so she took a spoon and measured in a liberal supply of mustard and red pepper; then she went out into the yard.

It was fortunate that the minister and his new wife were not coming until the next day.  Ethelwyn, however, spent a very unhappy afternoon.  That night she woke up sobbing, and crawled into grandmother’s big bed.

“What’s the matter, child?” said grandmother, sitting up in bed with a start.  “Are you sick?”

“Yes, grandmother, awful!  You’ll never like me again, I know.”  And then she told her about the pumpkin pies.

“Well, child, I am thankful you told me,” said grandmother with a sigh, “for when you are as old as I am, and have a reputation for doing things, it goes hard to make a failure of them, and I should have been much mortified.  Fortunately there are plenty of pie shells, and there is more pumpkin steamed, so that I can season and put them together in the morning.  But I am glad, dear child, that your conscience wouldn’t let you sleep comfortably until you had told; be careful, however, never again to break your word.  Remember the Van Starks’ watchword, ’Love, Truth, and Honor.’  Now cuddle down here and go to sleep.”