“Oh! how good it sounds!” said Margery.  “I should love a salad garden.”

That very evening, Margery’s father took pencil and paper, and drew out a plan for her garden; first, they talked it all over, then he drew what they decided on; it looked like the diagram on the next page.

“The outside strip is for flowers,” said Margery’s father, “and next is a footpath, all the way round the beds; that is to let you get at the flowers to weed and to pick; there is a wider path through the middle, and the rest is for rows of salad vegetables.”

“Papa, it is glorious!” said Margery.

Papa laughed.  “I hope you will still think it glorious when the weeding time comes,” he said, “for you know, you and mother have promised to take care of this garden, while I take care of the big one.”

“I wouldn’t not take care of it for anything!” said Margery.  “I want to feel that it is my very own.”

[Illustration]

Her father kissed her, and said it was certainly her “very own.”

Two evenings after that, when Margery was called in from her first ramble in the fields, she found the postman at the door.

“Something for you, Margery,” said her mother, with the look she had when something nice was happening.

It was a box, quite a big box, with a label on it that said:—­

MISS MARGERY BROWN,
PRIMROSE COTTAGE,
21 NARCISSUS ROAD,
COLCHESTER.

From Seeds and Plants Company, Reading.

Margery could hardly wait to open it.  It was filled with little packages, all with printed labels; and in the packages, of course, were seeds.  It made Margery dance, just to read the names,—­nasturtium, giant helianthus, canariensis, calendula, Canterbury bells:  more names than I can tell you; and other packages, bigger, that said, “Sweet Peas,” “French beans,” “Carrots,” “Wallflowers,” and such things!  Margery could almost smell the posies, she was so excited.  Only, she had seen so little of flowers that she did not know what all the names meant.  She did not know that a helianthus was a sunflower until her mother told her so, and she had never seen the dear, blue, bell-shaped flowers that always grow in old-fashioned gardens, and are called Canterbury bells.  She thought the calendula must be a strange, grand flower, by its name; but her mother told her it was the gay, sturdy, everydayish little flower called a marigold.  There was a great deal for a little city girl to be surprised about, and it did seem as if morning was a long way off!

“Did you think you could plant them in the morning?” asked her mother.  “You know, dear, the ground has to be made ready first; it takes a little time,—­it may be several days before you can plant.”

That was another surprise.  Margery had thought she could begin to sow the seed right off.

But this was what had happened.  Early the next morning, a man came driving up to the cottage with two strong white horses; in his wagon was a plough.  I suppose you have seen ploughs, but Margery never had, and she watched with great interest, while the man and her father took the plough from the cart and harnessed the horses to it.  It was a great, three-cornered piece of sharp steel, with long handles coming up from it, so that a man could hold it in place.  It looked like this:—­