“What shall we mix with it?” asked Belle, and Norma said: “What shall we use?”
“One of you can borrow Ames’s fork while the other goes for our own digging fork in the barn. I will wheel as much of the fertilizer as is meant to be mixed in one of the pyramids of marsh muck, and one of you can fork it in thoroughly. The next load I will wheel to the second heap of muck and then the other girl can mix the two fertilizers together. In this way, we ought to be through with all the different heaps that Ames is shoveling up on the bank by the time he is finished cleaning out the swamp.”
Janet and Norma had not hankered for this particular kind of gardening, but they liked it better than doing some tiresome task that had become monotonous because of daily repetition. Norma was forking over the muck with an earnest goodwill when the cries from Janet caused every one on the farm to race for the barn yard to find out what dire thing had happened there.
This was the time Janet discovered Seizer, one of the three little pigs dead from overeating and the tomato vines she had fed them that morning.
It took a full hour to calm Janet’s regrets and cries, but the distressing circumstance cooled the girls’ ardent eagerness to finish the water garden that day without fail.
When Farmer Ames laid aside his tools that evening, however, and went to get Ben and the cart, he said to Mrs. James: “Well, it looks as if that work would be finished tomorrow!”
This was so encouraging to Norma that she began to reconsider her recent hasty decision that flower gardening was a waste of time unless one had money and help to do the work right.
Directly after supper, that evening, Norma sat down to write a few lines home. The other girls were planning to do likewise for each one needed money to conduct her business undertaking.
“Dear Mother and Father:” Norma began.
Then she sat chewing the end of the pen holder and frowned at the road in front of the house. The sight must have been inspiring, for a moment later she resumed her writing and kept steadily on until the letter was finished.