Marion St. John Webb - Knock Three Times!

THIS story really begins with the arrival of a brown paper parcel addressed to Molly, but while the postman is bringing it along the road, there may be just time to explain about Jack and Molly’s birthday, so that you will understand why Molly sat down to supper wishing earnestly that silver bangles were considered useful and necessary presents.

Jack and Molly were twins, and this was their ninth birthday. Such a happy, exciting day it had been; it felt like a birthday all day long, so you can guess how jolly it was, and how special it made Jack and Molly feel. Little did they guess what a weird and mysterious end to the day was now approaching!

They had received a number of beautiful presents, and, to their unbounded joy, a fine new bicycle each from Mother and Father. But there was one particular thing that Molly had wanted for her birthday, and that was a silver bangle.

“Like Mother’s,” she had told Jack, “only silver. One that nearly slips off when I hang my hand down and that I have to push back up my arm—and it jingles.”

As there happened also to be one other thing that Jack wanted specially, a box of paints, the two children had decided some days ago to write to their Aunt Phœbe, who always remembered their birthday, and hint to her as delicately as possible what the most acceptable presents would be. It had been a forlorn hope for Molly, because Aunt Phœbe had fixed ideas about useless and useful presents. Probably she might consider a box of paints useful to encourage Jack’s artistic leanings; but a bangle–! Still, Molly sent her letter and hoped for the best.

On looking at Jack and Molly you would have noticed at once that they both had the same kind of brown, curly hair and the same frank expression about the eyes; but while Molly’s eyes were brown, and her face often wistful and dreamy, Jack’s eyes were blue, and his expression alert and full of energy; there was a certain reckless air about Jack....

But the postman has reached their house, and is handing in two brown paper parcels, and so the story really begins.

“It’s Aunt Phœbe’s handwriting!” Jack exclaimed, as he seized his parcel.

“Yours looks flat—like a paint-box, Jack,” said Molly breathlessly, tugging at the string of her parcel.

“Yours looks like something in a box too. Probably it will be a bracelet,” Jack said encouragingly, hoping that it would be, for he felt he should be almost as disappointed as Molly if it wasn’t.

Jack was the first to vanquish strings and paper, and with a yell of delight he tore the wrapper off his parcel and disclosed a beautiful, shiny black paint-box. For a few moments Mother and Father and Jack were so engrossed in examining and admiring the box that they did not notice that Molly had unwrapped her parcel, until her intense quietness was borne in upon them, and they all three turned round.

Molly stood by the side of the table gazing tearfully at a round, grey-looking thing half buried in a mass of tissue paper.

“What is it, dear?” asked Mother, crossing over to her side.

“It’s not–” began Molly, then stopped because of an uncomfortable lump in her throat.

“Let me see,” said Mother, and she picked up the grey thing and turned it over in her hands. On the other side was pinned a slip of paper, on which was written:

Hoping she will be a good girl on her birthday and have many happy returns. I thought this useful little thing would do for her dressing-table.

“Why, it’s a pincushion!” said Mother.

“What a beastly shame!” said Jack.

“Be quiet, Jack. It’s a very pretty one,” Mother added consolingly.

“Funny shape, isn’t it?” queried Father.

“It’s—let me see—why, it’s the shape of a—what do you call those things?—pumpkins. It’s shaped like a pumpkin,” answered Mother.

“But it’s grey,” objected Father. “Why didn’t they make it yellow or green while they were about it?”

“I suppose Aunt Phœbe thought grey would keep clean longer,” said Jack: “that’s why she chose it.”

Had Aunt Phœbe known when she bought ‘this useful little thing’ what it Really Was—could she have foreseen any of the mysterious happenings that were to follow the arrival of her birthday present—she would have preferred to send her niece half a dozen of the most jingly silver bangles ever made; for she disapproved of adventures in any shape or form, even more than she disapproved of bangles. Yet it was entirely through Aunt Phœbe that Jack and Molly took part in the adventure of the Grey Pumpkin at all.

WHEN Molly went up to bed that night she took the pincushion with her and placed it on the dressing-table, and tried her best to think that it looked nice. “It really will be useful,” she told herself, and to prove this she picked up a long pin and stuck it into the pumpkin pincushion, though with a little more violence than was necessary. Then she ran across the room and tumbled into bed.

It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the moonbeams streaming into the room made it almost as light as day. Molly lay there snug, drowsily planning out lovely rides that she and Jack would go as soon as they had both learnt how to manage their cycles; the thought of her bicycle sent a warm thrill through her heart and a smile of content hovering about her mouth.

She could hear Jack in the next room moving noisily about; he always made a dreadful noise in his room, thumping and banging things down and whistling shrilly, until he got into bed. And to-night the extra excitement of having a birthday seemed to make the thumping extra heavy and the whistling extra shrill. Presently the thuds and bumps and whistles ceased abruptly, and she knew that Jack was in bed; and to be in bed and to be asleep were practically the same thing with Jack. No sooner did his head touch the pillow than he was as good as asleep, and no sooner did he open his eyes in the morning than he was out of bed and hunting for his stockings. Sleep did not come so readily to Molly. She would often lie awake for a long time after she had gone to bed, thinking and planning, her brain ticking busily.

Molly was just wondering whether it would be possible for her and Jack to cycle to Brighton and back in a day, and whether Mother would let them go, when all at once she became aware that something was moving in her room; a soft, rolling sound came from the direction of the window.

Molly raised her head and gazed with startled eyes across the moonlit room. She could see something large and round moving softly on the dressing-table. It looked just as if– Surely her eyes were playing her some trick! She stared across at the dressing-table, frightened, yet fascinated. Then she sat up. No, her eyes had not deceived her.

There, in front of the looking-glass, rocking gently from side to side, was the pumpkin pincushion, grown to nearly three times its original size, and growing still larger every second.

Bigger and bigger it grew, until it had grown almost as big round as the front wheel of Molly’s bicycle; then it ceased rocking (and growing) and remained still for a few seconds; then, rolling quietly along the dressing-table and over the edge, it fell with a dull thud to the floor. Across to the door it rolled, bumped softly against it, and drew back a few paces. Molly watched as the door swung open, and the Grey Pumpkin passed out on to the landing.

Molly was filled with amazement. What had happened? What did it mean? She remained quite still, hesitating for a moment. Then she sprang out of bed. Her first fear had vanished, leaving in its place an overwhelming curiosity—and another feeling that she couldn’t define—she just felt that she must follow the Pumpkin.