It finished up by rolling the caps into the village pond, and the farmer and the boys had to stand a long time fishing for them before they got them out.
SOME VOICES FROM THE KITCHEN GARDEN
By Mrs. Alfred Gatty
ONE—two—three—four—five; five neatly-raked kitchen-garden beds, four of them side by side, with a pathway between; the fifth a narrow slip, heading the others, and close to the gravel walk, as it was for succession-crops of mustard and cress, which are often wanted in a hurry for breakfast or tea.
Most people have stood by such beds in their own kitchen-gardens on soft spring mornings and evenings, and looked for the coming up of the seeds which either they or the gardener had sown.
Radishes in one, for instance, and of all three sorts—white-turnip, red-turnip, and long-tailed.
Carrots in another; and this bed had been dug very deep indeed—subsoil digging, as it were; two spades' depth, that the roots might strike freely down.
Onions in another. Beets in the fourth; both the golden and red varieties; while the narrow slip was half mustard and half cress.
Such was the plan here, at least, and here, for a time, all the seeds lay sleeping, as it seemed. For, as the long smooth-raked beds stretched out dark and bare under the stars, they betrayed no symptoms of anything going on within.
Nevertheless, there was no sleeping in the case. The little seed-grains were fulfilling the law of their being, each after its kind; the grains, all but their inner germs, decaying; the germs swelling and growing, till they rose out of their cradles, and made their way, through their earthen cover lid, to the light of day.