"Come, Mary Lee," said Nan, "Aunt Sarah will see to everything. There is really nothing for us to do, so let's go work in our gardens. It's a splendid day for weeding."
The girls' gardens were side by side. In Nan's grew currant bushes, a dwarf apple-tree, tiny tomatoes, yellow and red, sweet corn, and in one corner, pleasant smelling herbs, thyme, tansy, sage, lavender and bergamot. Flowering beans ran over her share of the fence, and a rollicking pumpkin vine sprawled its length along the line between this and Mary Lee's garden. All in Nan's garden appealed to the senses. She gloated over the delicate pink blooms which covered her small tree in the spring. She reveled in the shining red currants hanging in clusters among the green leaves. She delighted in the scarlet and yellow tomatoes, in the delicate bloom of the lavender, the graceful green of the tansy, the perfume of the bergamot. These gardens were theirs provided they raised something useful, and Nan had kept within the limits, but her mother smiled to see how she had chosen.
Mary Lee, on the contrary, showed a practical utilitarianism. Potatoes, onions, large lusty tomatoes, solid cabbages, mighty turnips, radishes and lettuce were what she aspired to cultivate, and right well did the crops show.
"I think I'll have an asparagus bed next year," said Nan bending down to gather a leaf of bergamot. "It looks so pretty and feathery, and after it is once started it is no trouble at all."
"It will take up a lot of room," returned Mary Lee. "I do wish you'd pull up that old pumpkin vine; it's getting all in among my turnips."
"It's too late in the season for it to hurt them," returned Nan nonchalantly, "and I really can't keep it on my side, Mary Lee, unless I sit here all day and all night watching it, for it grows so fast I'm continually having to unwind it from something. I believe it is a fairy vine, an ogre—no, it's too jolly to be an ogre. It may be a playful giant that grabs at everybody just to be funny."
"I don't think it's a bit funny," replied Mary Lee, not possessing Nan's humor. "I just wish you'd come and get it away from my side."
Nan stepped across the twig fence which separated the two gardens. "Come here, old Giant Pumpkin-head," she said. "You must stop curling your fingers around everything you see. Stay on your own side." She dragged the obtrusive length of vine across to her own garden. "He does spread mighty near over the whole place," she continued. "I'm afraid I shall have to put a spell on him another year. Oh, I know where I'll have him next season."
"Where?" asked Mary Lee industriously pulling up weeds which yielded easily after the rain.
"Oh, never mind where. I can't tell just yet," Nan hastened to say, for her thought was to allow a pumpkin vine to have its own way upon the edge of the field where she had her retreat. She, too, fell to pulling weeds, but presently she cried: "Mary Lee, Mary Lee, Miss Lawrence is coming up the street and I believe she is coming to our house."