cperl-mode and abbrevs

[Harry Putnam]

Having trouble getting abbrevs to turn on by default in cperl-mode

I have this in .emacs:
(setq default-abbrev-mode t)
(read-abbrev-file)
And abbrevs are turned on in the other language modes I use.
sh bash ksh c perl

It may have something to do with the way I've forced cperl-mode on
perl files.  Maybe this isn't the way to do it.
(setq auto-mode-alist
           (cons '("\\.\\([pP]\\([Llm]\\|erl\\)\\|al\\)\\'" \
                   . cperl-mode ) auto-mode-alist))

 (setq interpreter-mode-alist
           (cons '("perl" . cperl-mode)
                         interpreter-mode-alist))

Can anyone tell what I need to do to turn on abbrevs when cperl-mode
comes up?

I tried hacking up a hook but don't realy know how to write one.

(defun hp-cperl-mode-hook()
  "Turns on abbrev mode in cperl mode"
  (setq default-abbrev-mode t)
  (read-abbrev-file))
(add-hook 'cperl-mode-hook 'hp-cperl-mode-hook)

This is now commented out since it didn't improve things at all.