About a week after this some of Hal's corn ears were large enough to pick and very delicious they were boiled, and eaten from the cob with salt and butter on. Mother Blake also cooked some of the lima beans Mab had planted when she made her garden, and the corn and beans, cooked together, made a dish called "succotash," which name the Indians gave it many years ago.
"What does the name mean?" asked Hal.
"I can't answer that, for I don't know," replied Daddy Blake.
"I know what it means," said Uncle Pennywait.
"What?" asked Mab.
"It means fine, good, very good," replied her uncle. "Or, if it doesn't, it ought to. Those Indians knew what was good, all right! I'll have some more, Mother Blake," and he passed his dish the second time.
One day, when Hal and Mab had finished cutting down some weeds in their garden plots they saw their father carrying some long boards down to the lower end of the lot next door.
"Are you going to build a bridge, Daddy?" asked Hal, for there was a little brook not far away.
"No, I am going to make my celery grow white?" he answered.
"Make celery grow white?" exclaimed Mab. "I thought it grew white, or light green, all of itself."