“SAY, Gogo!” shouted the Dunce one morning as he ran up the steps of the
shoe house. “Do you like watermelon?”
“Say, foolish person, what you-all askin’ such a silly question fo’?”
grinned the happy colored Teenie Weenie. “If there is anything in the
whole world I like better than watermelon, it’s mo’ watermelon.”
“Well I-I-I know where there’s a great b-b-big piece,” shouted the
Dunce. “It’s over on a table in the big green house and there was a man
eatin’ some and he said that he couldn’t eat any more. I heard him, for
I climbed up the morning glory vine at the window and watched him.”
“Let’s go!” shouted several of the Teenie Weenies.
“Well you’d better not be in a hurry,” remarked the General, stepping
out onto the front porch. “You all know that it wouldn’t be right to
help yourselves to that watermelon unless the people who own it were
going to throw it away.”
“Yes s-s-sir, that’s j-j-j-just what they are going to do,” stuttered
the Dunce. “The man said that he couldn’t eat any more and a woman said
to leave it right on the table and she would throw it out.”
“Well that’s different,” answered the General, who was fond of melon
himself. “Under the circumstances we can go over and have a taste.”
It took but a short time for the little people to make their way over to
the house and, crawling through the crack under the kitchen door, they
saw the red top of the melon on the table. To their delight they saw a
great deal had been left.
The Teenie Weenies all are wonderful climbers, and it was a simple
matter for the little folks to climb up onto the table. They swarmed
onto the melon and ate until they could not hold another bite.
After the little people had eaten all they could hold they amused
themselves by playing with the various things they found on the table.
The Clown climbed up to the top of a fork, which stuck in the melon, and
performed some wonderful acrobatic feats. The small boys took off their
shoes and stockings, waded in the juice, and pushed themselves about
with toothpicks on the huge seeds, which made fine rafts.
Gogo ate until he nearly burst, and the Doctor found the little fellow
sitting on the handle of a knife holding his tiny head.
“What’s the matter?” asked the Doctor.
“I’s in trouble,” he groaned.
“Anything serious?” asked the Doctor.
“Yes, sir,” answered the colored Teenie Weenie, pointing to the huge
slice of melon. “I’s plumb full. Can’t eat another bite, and all that
watermelon before me!”
“Well that is sort of tough,” laughed the Doctor, “but if I were you I’d
not let that worry me, for you certainly will be sick if you eat any
more.”
The Cowboy carried several of the seeds back to the shoe house and
stored them away in the tool house.
[‡Illustration: Watermelon pits]
“I’m going to plant these next summer,” he said, “and then we can have a
watermelon of our own.”
“You’d have a hard time cutting it open,” suggested the Old Soldier.
“Gosh!” exclaimed the Cowboy, “I never thought of that, but I suppose we
could blast it open with dynamite.”
“Just leave that to Gogo,” laughed the Doctor. “He will find some way to
get into it.”
The Teenie Weenies were so full of melon they could not eat a bite of
lunch—not even the Dunce—and the Cook had a good rest that day.
Poor Gogo ate more than was good for him. He consumed a piece of melon
as big as a hickory nut and the Doctor was up half the night putting
teenie weenie hot water bottles on his teenie weenie tummie.
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