The Idea That Went Astray

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!”

“Oh, go see what it is! I’m scared, scared!” wailed Milly, who scarcely recognized her own handiwork in the darkness, so strange it looked.

In the excitement they did not hear the car whistle nor the sound of footsteps on the gravel walk.

Just then a breeze sprang up, flaring the candle, which sent out a long tongue of flame from the pumpkin head’s mouth, and the white something behind began to wave. Like a flock of frightened birds the children, Fred, Amy, Janie and Milly, turned and ran as fast as they could, stumbling over each other in their flight.

A man’s figure darkened the doorway. “Hello!” said Uncle Ned. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, the pumpkin—there’s something there behind it—we thought we’d scare you!”

They were all talking together, so Uncle Ned did not understand at first.

“And you scared yourselves?” he said, at last. “Come, let us see what the ‘something white’ is,” and he went straight up to the garden fence and pulled down Aunt Mildred’s white crocheted shawl.

“Milly forgot to take it in, as I asked her,” remarked Aunt Mildred, “and it’s lucky you found it.”

Uncle Ned laughed so loud that everybody else laughed, too.

Then he put his hand down into his overcoat pocket and brought forth two big brown parcels of nuts and candy, and Aunt Mildred brought in a basket of big red apples, and after all, it was a jolly Hallowe’en, although, as Milly remarked, the “getting scared part got mixed up.”