“No, I thank you.” (I wonder what all this is about?)

“Don’t you think we could sell some strawberries next year?”

“By all means, sell anything.  We shall no doubt get rich out of this acre.”

“Don’t be foolish.”

And now!

“Don’t you think it would be nice to have a?"....

And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quite enough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economical manner.  “Would n’t that be nice?”

“Oh, yes!  And where is the money to come from?”

“I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries.”

“Certainly.  But I think we would make more money if we sold the plants now.”

“Well,” said Polly, concluding the whole matter, “I am going to do it.”  And, having thus “consulted” me, Polly goes away; and I put in the turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell.  But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off the loamy bed.  I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone out of the dirt.  That went into the first crop.

In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little taken aback to find that a new enemy had turned up.  The celery had just rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a faint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big green-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm:  but I don’t know who called him; I am sure I did not.  It was almost ludicrous that he should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposed that my war with the living animals was over.  Yet he was, no doubt, predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous.  It beats me—­Nature does.  I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week, it would n’t know me on my return.  The patch I scratched over for the turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious “pusley,” which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill of old age.  It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality.  While all the others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, upon the summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever.  It accepts no armistice.

FIFTEENTH WEEK

It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it has a contrary effect on a garden.  I was absent for two or three weeks.  I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was over it all, so to speak. (This is in addition to the actual snakes in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.) I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she said she had.  I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the early grapes and pears.  The green worm had also seen to about half the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left.  On the whole, the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.