SAMMIE PLANTS TOMATOES

“Look at the lovely vegetables!” exclaimed one of the ladies in the automobile, as she glanced at what Hal and Mab had spread out on their store counter—­the old barn door set on the two boxes.

“Are they nice and fresh, children?” asked the second lady, as she put a funny pair of spectacles, on a stick, up to her nose, and looked at the string beans through the shiny glass.

“Oh, yes’m, they’re very fresh!” answered Hal.  “Daddy and us just picked ’em from our garden.”

“We have more than we can eat, and mother hasn’t time to can the tomatoes,” explained Mab, for their father had left them alone, to say and do as they thought best.

“They certainly look nice,” went on the first lady, “And how well the children have arranged them.”

“Like a picture,” added the other.  “See how pretty the red, green and yellow colors show.  I must have some tomatoes and beans.”

“And I want some of those carrots.  They say carrots make your eyes bright.”

Hal and Mab thought the ladies eyes were bright enough, especially when the sun shone and glittered on the funny stick-spectacles.  The automobile had stopped and the chauffeur got down off the front seat behind the steering wheel and walked toward the children’s new vegetable store.

“How much are your tomatoes?” asked the lady who had first spoken.

“Eight cents a quart,” answered Hal, his father telling him to ask that price, which was what they were selling for at the store.  “And they’re just picked,” added the little boy.

“I can see they are,” spoke the lady.  “I’ll take three quarts, and you may keep the extra penny for yourselves,” she added as she handed Hal a bright twenty-five-cent piece.

Hal and his sister were so excited by this, their first sale, and at getting real money, that they could hardly put the three quarts of red tomatoes in the paper bags Daddy Blake had brought for them from the store.  They did spill some, but as the tomatoes fell on the soft grass they were not broken.

“I want some beans and carrots,” said the other lady, and the chauffeur helped Hal and Mab put them in bags, and brought the money back to the children.  The beans and carrots were sold for thirty cents, so that Hal and Mab now have fifty-five cents for their garden stuff.

“Isn’t it a lot of money!” cried Hal, when the auto had rolled away down the street, and he and his sister looked at the shining coins.

“Well get rich,” exclaimed Mab, gleefully.

A little later a lady in a carriage stopped to buy some beans, and after that a man, walking along the street, bought a quart of tomatoes.  Later on a little girl and her mother stopped and looked at the carrots, buying one bunch.

“I want my little girl to eat them as they are good for her,” said the lady, “but she says she doesn’t like them, though I boil them in milk for her.”