'Oh, any place will do, old chap; but you needn't waste your best ground; it's great stuff, you know—it would grow in the Sahara. Just sow it along with your grass or clover seeds.'
'It comes up quickly, doesn't it?' Bart said anxiously. 'Do you think it would make all down there look smooth and green and nice in a month?'
Mortimer laughed. 'Are you taking to landscape gardening, Bart?' he said. 'I never knew before you had an eye for effect.'
Bart sat down on the step. 'It's no joking matter, Morty,' he said. 'My mother and Challis will be home in a month; we've got to make the place look up a bit before they come. The governor's been making bonfires of all the rubbish since breakfast—it does look tidier, doesn't it?'
Mortimer looked round. 'It's not the same place,' he said heartily, and added for encouragement, 'And after all, perhaps they won't come, old fellow; you know you've had a lot of false alarms.'
'Oh, but this time it's certain,' Bart said, and not without unhappiness; 'they've actually started by this.'
Floss came clattering out in her rough boots. She sat down on the other side of the family friend.
'I knewed it was you when I heard Pup bark,' she said; 'you came last Sunday, too, and the Sunday before that.'
'Did I, Flossie?' he said. 'That sounds as if it were a Sunday too many.'
'Oh no, no one minds you,' she answered; 'if it were your father, now, or the Revering Mr. Smith, it might be a nuisance; we'd have to put a clean tablecloth on for them.'