"We've been in the garden, in our gardens," Ted replied.
"Digging up the plants to see if they were growing—eh?" said an uncle who liked to tease a little sometimes.
Ted didn't mind teasing. He only laughed. Cissy looked a little, a very little offended. She did not like teasing, and she specially disliked any one teasing her dear Ted. Her face grew a little red.
"Ted knows about f'owers bootilly," she said; "Ted knows lots of things."
"Cissy!" said Ted, whose turn it was now to grow a little red, but Cissy maintained her ground.
"Ses," she said. "Ted does."
"Ted's to grow up a very clever man, isn't he, Cissy?" said her father encouragingly—"as clever as Uncle Ted here."
"Oh no," the little fellow replied, blushing still more, for Ted never put himself forward so as to be noticed; "I never could be that. Uncle Ted writes books with lots of counting and stick-sticks in them and——"
"Lots of what?" asked his uncle.
"Stick-sticks," said Ted simply. "I don't know what it means, but mother told me it was a sort of counting—like how many days in a year were fine and how many rainy."