“Don’t turn around,” cautioned Bob in a low tone. “When we go back to our car I’ll tell you all about it.”
Bob gave his attention more to his breakfast after this, and seemed anxious to keep Betty from asking any more questions. He noticed a package of flat envelopes lying under her purse and asked if she had letters she wished mailed.
“Those aren’t letters,” answered Betty, taking them out and spreading them on the cloth for him to see. “They’re flower seeds, Bob. Hardy flowers.”
“You haven’t planned your garden yet, have you?” cried the astonished boy. “When you haven’t the first idea of the kind of place you’re going to live in? Your uncle wrote, you know, that living in Flame City was so simplified people didn’t take time to look around for rooms or a house—they took whatever they could get, sure that that was all there was. How do you know you’ll have a place to plant a garden?”
Betty buttered another roll.
“I’m not planning for a garden,” she said mildly. “You’re going to help me plant these seeds, and we’re going to do it right after breakfast—just as soon as we can get out on the observation platform.”
Bob stared in bewilderment.
“I read a story once,” said Betty with seeming irrelevance. “It was about some woman who traveled through a barren country, mile after mile. She was on an accommodation train, too, or perhaps it was before they had good railroad service. And every so often her fellow-passengers saw that she threw something out of the window. They couldn’t see what it was, and she never told them. But the next year, when some of these same passengers made that trip again, the train rolled through acres and acres of the most gorgeous red poppies. The woman had been scattering the seed. She said, whether she ever rode over that ground again or not, she was sure some of the seeds would sprout and make the waste places beautiful for travelers.”
“I should think it would take a lot of seed,” said the practical Bob, his eyes following two men who were leaving the dining-car. “Did you get poppies, too?”