In a few days more tomatoes on the vines had red, rosy cheeks, some being red all over.  These Daddy Blake let Hal and Mab pick, and they brought them in the house.

“Oh, we shall have some of our own tomatoes for lunch!” cried Mother Blake when she saw them.  “How fine!  Our garden is beginning to give us back something to pay us for all the work we put on it.”

“But these are Daddy’s tomatoes,” said Hal.  “He had the first thing, after the radishes, for the table from his garden, and Mab and I haven’t anything.  Daddy’ll get his own prize.”

“No, I promise you I will not take the prize for these tomatoes, even if I did raise them in my part of the garden,” said Daddy Blake with a smile.  “And I won’t count the radishes we had before the tomatoes were ripe, either.  Those belonged to all of us.

“The prize isn’t going to be given away until all the crops are harvested, or brought in, and then we’ll see who has the most and the best of things that will keep over Winter.”

“Can you keep tomatoes all Winter?” asked Mab of her father.

“Well, no, not exactly.  But Mother can put them into cans, after they have been cooked, and she can make ketchup and spices of them—­chili sauce and the like—­as well as pickles, so, after all, you might say my tomatoes will last all Winter.

“Sometimes you can keep tomatoes fresh for quite a while down in a cool, dry cellar, if you pull the vines up by the roots, with the tomatoes still on them, and cover the roots with dirt.  But they will not keep quite all Winter, I believe.  At any rate I’m not going to keep ours that way.  We’ll can them.”

Mother Blake sliced the garden tomatoes for supper.  She also made a dressing for them, with oil, vinegar and spices, though Hal and Mab liked their tomatoes best with just salt on.

“Tomatoes are not only good to eat—­I mean they taste good—­but they are healthful for one,” said Daddy Blake.  “It is not so many years ago that no one ate tomatoes.  They feared they were poison, and in some parts of the country they were called Ladies’ or Love Apples.  But now many, many thousands of cans of tomatoes are put up every year, so that we may have them in Winter as well as in Summer, though of course the canned ones are not as nice tasting as the ones fresh from the garden, such as we have now.”

It was not long before there was lettuce from the Blake garden, and Mother Blake said it was the best she had ever eaten.  Lettuce, too, Daddy Blake explained, would not keep over Winter, though it is sold in many stores when there is snow on the ground.  But it comes from down South, where there is no Winter, being sent up on fast express trains.

“Lettuce is also as good to eat as are tomatoes,” remarked Daddy Blake.  “It is said to be good for persons who have too many nerves, or, rather, for those whose nerves are not in good condition.”

One day, when Hal and Mab came home from school, they hurried out, after leaving their books in the house, for they wanted to play some games.”