“Do you know, Father,” she said one morning, “I think it would be a good plan to make a few beds for vegetables by the side of the fence.”
“Vegetable-beds?”
“Yes; we can sow onions, carrots, haricot beans, potatoes, and cabbages.”
The Father was astonished. To him that seemed quite beyond their powers. Vegetable-beds in Saraceni!
For a few days his head was full of vegetable-beds, of potatoes, cabbages, and haricot beans; and a few days after that, the ground was already dug up and the beds were ready. Not a day passed on which the priest and his wife did not go about ten times to the beds to see if the seeds were growing. Great was the joy one day. The priest had risen very early.
“Wife, get up!”
“What’s the matter?”
“They have sprouted.”
The priest and his wife and all the children spent the whole day squatting by the beds. The more seeds they saw appear above the ground, the happier they were.
And again the villagers passed by the priest’s house and looked through the thorns at the priest’s vegetable-beds, and they said once more, “The priest is one of the devil’s own men!”