"Cabbages."
"Oh!" disappointedly, "I don't like cabbages, they haven't pretty flowers, and they haven't a pretty smell."
"Well, we can't have everything pretty, and glad enough we are of cabbages for dinner sometimes. The hens like them better than any flower, don't they?"
"Yes, so they do. I'll be able to give some of the leaves to the fowls, won't I?"
"Yes, if you don't give them too many."
"I must go now and see if my daisy is growing, and the marigold. I'll be back again in a minute," and away she trotted.
The others were sauntering slowly back from the fowl-house, and pausing to look at Charlie's strawberry plants on their way, when suddenly the silence was broken by a succession of squeals and shrieks and frantic calls to each one by name.
"Oh-h-h! oh-h! oh!! Bella! Daddy! Tom! Do come here. Charlie! oh, look, do look! there's a lovely rose bush growed up in my garden through the night, and it's got leaves on it! Oh, how did it come? Daddy, do come and see it. You never saw anything so wonderful."
They all ran, of course. Bella and the boys nearly as excited as Margery, and full of curiosity, their father full of pleasure with the success of his surprise.
"Daddy, do come and look. It is a real one, isn't it?" Clutching him by the hand to hurry him. "It isn't a fairy rose, is it?" anxiously.