CHAPTER XIX
TORCHY GETS A HUNCH
Course, I only got my suspicions, and I ain't in position to call for the real facts in the case, but I'll bet if it came to a show down I could name the master mind that wished this backache and the palm blisters on me. Uh-huh! Auntie. I wouldn't put it past her, for when it comes to evenin' up a score she's generally right there with the goods. Deep stuff, as a rule, too.
I ain't denyin' either, but what Auntie had grounds for complaint. Maybe you remember how she came out to spend a quiet week-end with us after a nerve shatterin' night in town and near got chewed up by Buddy, the super-watch dog, and then was almost flooded out of bed because the attic storage tank ran over? Not that I didn't have a perfect alibi on both counts. I did. But neither registered with Auntie.
Still, this before-breakfast sod-turnin' idea comes straight from Vee. Ever try that for an appetizer? Go on, give it a whirl. Ought to be willin' to try anything once, you know. Some wise old guy said that, I understand. I'd like to find the spot where he's laid away. I think I'd go plant a cabbage on his grave. Anyway, he's got some little tribute like that comin' from me.
Just turnin' up sod with a spade in the dewy morn. Listens kind of romantic, don't it! And you might like it first rate. Might agree with you. As for me, I've discovered that my system don't demand anything like that. Posi-tive-ly. I gave it a good try-out and the reactions wasn't satisfactory.
You see, it was this way: there's a narrow strip down by the road where our four-acre estate sort of pinches out, and Vee had planned to do some fancy landscape gardenin' on it—a bed of cannas down the middle, I believe, and then rows of salvia, and geraniums and other things. She had it all mapped out on paper. Also the bulbs and potted plants had arrived and were ready to be put in.
But it happens that Dominick, our official gardener, had all he could jump to just then, plantin' beans and peas and corn, and the helper he depended on to break up this roadside strip had gone back on him.
"How provoking!" says Vee. "I am so anxious to get those things in. If the ground was ready I would do the planting myself. I just wish"—and then she stops.