Stories to Tell to Children Part 20

Margery ran and brought the seed box, and found the package of corn.

It looked like kernels of gold, when it was opened.

"May I help?" Margery asked, when she saw how pretty it was.

"If you watch me sow one row, I think you can do the next," said her father.

So Margery watched. Her father took a handful of kernels, and, stooping, walked slowly along the line, letting the kernels fall, five or six at a time, in spots about a foot apart; he swung his arm with a gentle, throwing motion, and the golden seeds trickled out like little showers, very exactly. It was pretty to watch; it made Margery think of a photograph her teacher had, a photograph of a famous picture called "The Sower." Perhaps you have seen it.

Putting in the seed was not so easy to do as to watch; sometimes Margery got in too much, and sometimes not enough; but her father helped fix it, and soon she did better.

They planted peas, beans, spinach, carrots, and parsnips. And Margery's father made a row of holes, after that, for the tomato plants. He said those had to be transplanted; they could not be sown from seed.

When the seeds were in the trenches they had to be covered up, and Margery really helped at that. It is fun to do it. You stand beside the little trench and walk backward, and as you walk you hoe the loose earth back over the seeds; the same dirt that was hoed up you pull back again. Then you rake very gently over the surface, with the back of a rake, to even it all off. Margery liked it, because now the garden began to look LIKE a garden.

But best of all was the work next day, when her own little particular garden was begun. Father Brown loved Margery and Margery's mother so much that he wanted their garden to be perfect, and that meant a great deal more work. He knew very well that the old gra.s.s would begin to come through again on such "green" soil, and that it would make terribly hard weeding. He was not going to have any such thing for his two "little girls," as he called them. So he fixed that little garden very fine! This is what he did.

After he had thrown out all the turf, he shoveled clean earth on to the garden,-- as much as three solid inches of it; not a bit of gra.s.s was in that. Then it was ready for raking and fertilizing, and for the lines. The little footpaths were marked out by Father Brown's feet; Margery and her mother laughed well when they saw it, for it looked like some kind of dance. Mr. Brown had seen gardeners do it when he was a little boy, and he did it very nicely: he walked along the sides of the square, with one foot turned a little out, and the other straight, taking such tiny steps that his feet touched each other all the time. This tramped out a path just wide enough for a person to walk.

The wider path was marked with lines and raked.

Margery thought, of course, all the flowers would be put in as the vegetables were; but she found that it was not so. For some, her father poked little holes with his finger; for some, he made very shallow ditches; and some very small seeds were just scattered lightly over the top of the ground.

Margery and her mother had taken so much pains in thinking out how the flowers would look prettiest, that maybe you will like to hear just how they designed that garden. At the back were the sweet peas, which would grow tall, like a screen; on the two sides, for a kind of hedge, were yellow sunflowers; and along the front edge were the gay nasturtiums. Margery planned that, so that she could look into the garden from the front, but have it shut away from the vegetable patch by the tall flowers on the sides. The two front corners had coreopsis in them. Coreopsis is a tall, pretty, daisy-like flower, very dainty and bright. And then, in little square patches all round the garden, were planted white sweet alyssum, blue bachelor's b.u.t.tons, yellow marigolds, tall larkspur, many-colored asters and zinnias. All these lovely flowers used to grow in our grandmothers' gardens, and if you don't know what they look like, I hope you can find out next summer.

Between the flowers and the middle path went the seeds for that wonderful salad garden; all the things Mrs. Brown had named to Margery were there. Margery had never seen anything so cunning as the little round lettuce-seeds. They looked like tiny beads; it did not seem possible that green lettuce leaves could come from those. But they surely would.

Mother and father and Margery were all late to supper that evening.

But they were all so happy that it did not matter. The last thing Margery thought of, as she went to sleep at night, was the dear, smooth little garden, with its funny foot-path, and with the little sticks standing at the end of the rows, labeled "lettuce," "beets,"

"helianthus," and so on.

"I have a garden! I have a garden!" thought Margery, and then she went off to dreamland.

THE LITTLE COTYLEDONS

This is another story about Margery's garden.

The next morning after the garden was planted, Margery was up and out at six o'clock. She could not wait to look at her garden. To be sure, she knew that the seeds could not sprout in a single night, but she had a feeling that SOMETHING might happen while she was not looking. The garden was just as smooth and brown as the night before, and no little seeds were in sight.

But a very few mornings after that, when Margery went out, there was a funny little crack opening up through the earth, the whole length of the patch. Quickly she knelt down in the footpath, to see. Yes! Tiny green leaves, a whole row of them, were pushing their way through the crust! Margery knew what she had put there: it was the radish-row; these must be radish leaves. She examined them very closely, so that she might know a radish next time. The little leaves, no bigger than half your little-finger nail, grew in twos,--two on each tiny stem; they were almost round.

Margery flew back to her mother, to say that the first seeds were up.

And her mother, nearly as excited as Margery, came to look at the little crack.

Each day, after that, the row of radishes grew, till, in a week, it stood as high as your finger, green and st.u.r.dy. But about the third day, while Margery was stooping over the radishes, she saw something very, very small and green, peeping above ground, where the lettuce was planted. Could it be weeds? No, for on looking very closely she saw that the wee leaves faintly marked a regular row. They did not make a crack, like the radishes; they seemed too small and too far apart to push the earth up like that. Margery leaned down and looked with all her eyes at the baby plants. The tiny leaves grew two on a stem, and were almost round. The more she looked at them the more it seemed to Margery that they looked exactly as the radish looked when it first came up. "Do you suppose," Margery said to herself, "that lettuce and radish look alike? They don't look alike in the market!"

Day by day the lettuce grew, and soon the little round leaves were easier to examine; they certainly were very much like radish leaves.

Then, one morning, while she was searching the ground for signs of seeds, Margery discovered the beets. In irregular patches on the row, hints of green were coming. The next day and the next they grew, until the beet leaves were big enough to see.

Margery looked. Then she looked again. Then she wrinkled her forehead.

"Can we have made a mistake?" she thought. "Do you suppose we can have planted all radishes?"

For those little beet leaves were almost round, and they grew two on a stem, precisely like the lettuce and the radish; except for the size, all three rows looked alike.

It was too much for Margery. She ran to the house and found her father. Her little face was so anxious that he thought something unpleasant had happened. "Papa," she said, all out of breath, "do you think we could have made a mistake about my garden? Do you think we could have put radishes in all the rows?"

Father laughed. "What makes you think such a thing?" he asked.

"Papa," said Margery, "the little leaves all look exactly alike! every plant has just two tiny leaves on it, and shaped the same; they are roundish, and grow out of the stem at the same place."

Papa's eyes began to twinkle. "Many of the dicotyledonous plants look alike at the beginning," he said, with a little drawl on the big word.

That was to tease Margery, because she always wanted to know the big words she heard.

"What's 'dicotyledonous'?" said Margery, carefully.

"Wait till I come home to-night, dear," said her father, "and I'll tell you."

That evening Margery was waiting eagerly for him, when her father finished his supper. Together they went to the garden, and father examined the seedlings carefully. Then he pulled up a little radish plant and a tiny beet.

"These little leaves," he said, "are not the real leaves of the plant; they are only little food-supply leaves, little pockets to hold food for the plant to live on till it gets strong enough to push up into the air. As soon as the real leaves come out and begin to draw food from the air, these little subst.i.tutes wither up and fall off. These two lie folded up in the little seed from the beginning, and are full of plant food. They don't have to be very special in shape, you see, because they don't stay on the plant after it is grown up."

"Then every plant looks like this at first?" said Margery.

"No, dear, not every one; plants are divided into two kinds: those which have two food leaves, like these plants, and those which have only one; these are called dicotyledonous, and the ones which have but one food leaf are monocotyledonous. Many of the dicotyledons look alike."

"I think that is interesting," said Margery. "I always supposed the plants were different from the minute they began to grow."

"Indeed, no," said father. "Even some of the trees look like this when they first come through; you would not think a birch tree could look like a vegetable or a flower, would you? But it does, at first; it looks so much like these things that in the great nurseries, where trees are raised for forests and parks, the workmen have to be very carefully trained, or else they would pull up the trees when they are weeding. They have to be taught the difference between a birch tree and a weed."

"How funny!" said Margery dimpling.

"Yes, it sounds funny," said father; "but you see, the birch tree is dicotyledonous, and so are many weeds, and the dicotyledons look much alike at first."

"I am glad to know that, father," said Margery, soberly. "I believe maybe I shall learn a good deal from living in the country; don't you think so?"

Margery's father took her in his arms. "I hope so, dear," he said; "the country is a good place for little girls."

And that was all that happened, that day.

THE TALKATIVE TORTOISE[1]

[1] Very freely adapted from one of the Fables of Bidpai.