“Now for the seed,” said father.

Margery ran and brought the seed box.  “May I help?” she asked.

“If you watch me sow one row, I think you can do the next,” said her father.

So Margery watched.  Her father took a handful of peas, and, stooping, walked slowly along the line, letting the seed trickle through his fingers.  It was pretty to watch; it made Margery think of a photograph her teacher had, a photograph of a famous picture called “The Sower.”  Perhaps you have seen it.

Putting in the seed was not so easy to do as to watch; sometimes Margery dropped in too much, and sometimes not enough; but her father was patient with her, and soon she did better.

They planted peas, beans, spinach, carrots, and parsnips.  And Margery’s father made a row of holes, after that, for the tomato plants.  He said those had to be transplanted; they could not be sown from seed.

When the seeds were in the trenches they had to be covered up, and Margery really helped at that.  It is fun to do it.  You stand beside the little trench and walk backward, and as you walk you hoe the loose earth back over the seeds; the same earth that was hoed up you pull back again.  Then you rake very gently over the surface, with the back of a rake, to even it all off.  Margery liked it, because now the garden began to look like a garden.

But best of all was the work next day, when her own little particular garden was begun.  Father Brown loved Margery and Margery’s mother so much that he wanted their garden to be perfect, and that meant a great deal more work.  He knew very well that the old grass would begin to come through again on such soil, and that it would make terribly hard weeding.  He was not going to have any such thing for his two “little girls,” as he called them.  So he gave that little garden particular attention.  This is what he did.

After he had thrown out all the turf, he shovelled clean earth on to the garden,—­as much as three solid inches of it; not a bit of grass was in that.  Then it was ready for raking and fertilising, and for the lines.  The little footpaths were marked out by Father Brown’s feet; Margery and her mother laughed well at his actions, for it looked like some kind of dance.  Mr Brown had seen gardeners do it when he was a little boy, and he did it very nicely:  he walked along the sides of the square, with one foot turned a little out, and the other straight, taking such tiny steps that his feet touched each other all the time.  This tramped out a path just wide enough for a person to walk.

The wider path was marked with lines and raked.

Margery thought, of course, all the flowers would be put in as the vegetables were; but she found that it was not so.  For some, her father poked little holes with his finger; for some, he made very shallow trenches; and some very small seeds were scattered lightly over the top of the ground.