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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe’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:

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

Had Aunt Phoebe 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 Phoebe that Jack and Molly took part in the adventure of the Grey Pumpkin at all.