Then--then--but it was a new voice that was speaking to him.

"Get up!" it said.

It wasn't Ole Man Pumpkin that was telling him to get up on that
table, so he could scalp him. It was Mother telling him to sit up in
bed!

"I knew they had too much pie," she was saying, and, "come, dear, open
your mouth; take this and you'll feel better in the morning."

She was on one side of the bed, and Father was on the other, ready to
take a hand, as he always did under the circumstances.

They weren't pleasant, either, the circumstances, for they
were,--first Father's grip on his arm, then a tablespoon--not a
teaspoon, or a dessert spoon, but a tablespoon, such as a giant might
use--full of a thick yellow liquid from that bottle they hated so, and
pointed right at his tongue.

[Illustration: "'Cut a hole in the top of his head--just enough to
scoop out his insides,' said Ole Man Pumpkin."]

However, he took it pretty bravely, swallowed it, gulped, then choked
back the tears. But the orange-juice, which followed the yellow stuff,
almost made up for it. He always did like orange as a color better
than yellow, any day.

And _there_ was Ole Man Pumpkin again, on the dining room table,