When they hear her voice in the garden, they fly to her, even if she does not call. And whenever she calls they always come. If Ursula were not kind and good to them, the doves would not love her.
EVA’S PEACH TREE.
One day Eva was eating a nice ripe peach. She thought she would plant the stone in a flower-pot and see what would come of it. Fred filled the pot with nice soft earth, and Eva kept it in a warm place all winter. Once in a while she would dig up the stone to see how it looked, and one day she found the stone split in two and a root starting from it. Oh, how pleased she was! and how eagerly she watched for the first green shoot to push its way through the soil!
In a month or two the peach-tree had grown quite tall, and when warm weather came Fred told Eva he would set it out of doors, for there was not room for it in the flower-pot. It would never be a tree if it had not space to spread its roots.
Fred made a lovely place for it in the garden. He marked out a circle, and edged it with pretty conch shells. Then he took his trowel, and dug a deep hole in the centre of this plot in which he put Eva’s peach tree. Then he packed the earth around its roots, and raked the ground smoothly, and sprinkled it with water from his watering-pot.
Inside the conch-shells Fred will set out a row of plants, and do his best to make them and the peach-tree thrive.
Eva has promised that Fred shall have the first ripe peach that she finds on her tree, for he is good and kind to her, and she loves him very dearly. But she will have to wait some time yet, for the tree is too young to bear fruit.