The Gourds
The little Wests each fancied a different style of doll. Eugenie liked dressed up visiting dolls, Florence played mother to baby dolls in long dresses, Tom liked what he called “funny fellows” and Indians, while baby Bunnie always insisted on her children keeping house.
Tom’s favorites, the funny fellows, came from the squash patch and gourd vines. It was not necessary to even dress these. All one had to do was to dip a match in ink and mark out faces on them.
These faces could be made either sunny and cheerful or sour and sad by changing the directions of the lines. Lines turning upward made the happy faces and those turning downward made the troubled ones.
The oval yellow gourds were made into fat men and Humpty Dumpties. These Tom used to make run races with each other by rolling them down hill. Which do you think always beat, the fattest and largest, or the smaller ones?