After he had thrown out all the turf, he shoveled 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 fertilizing, and for the lines.  The little footpaths were marked out by Father Brown’s feet; Margery and her mother laughed well when they saw it, 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 ditches; and some very small seeds were just scattered lightly over the top of the ground.

Margery and her mother had taken so much pains in thinking out how the flowers would look prettiest, that maybe you will like to hear just how they designed that garden.  At the back were the sweet peas, which would grow tall, like a screen; on the two sides, for a kind of hedge, were yellow sunflowers; and along the front edge were the gay nasturtiums.  Margery planned that, so that she could look into the garden from the front, but have it shut away from the vegetable patch by the tall flowers on the sides.  The two front corners had coreopsis in them.  Coreopsis is a tall, pretty, daisy-like flower, very dainty and bright.  And then, in little square patches all round the garden, were planted white sweet alyssum, blue bachelor’s buttons, yellow marigolds, tall larkspur, many-colored asters and zinnias.  All these lovely flowers used to grow in our grandmothers’ gardens, and if you don’t know what they look like, I hope you can find out next summer.

Between the flowers and the middle path went the seeds for that wonderful salad garden; all the things Mrs. Brown had named to Margery were there.  Margery had never seen anything so cunning as the little round lettuce-seeds.  They looked like tiny beads; it did not seem possible that green lettuce leaves could come from those.  But they surely would.

Mother and father and Margery were all late to supper that evening.  But they were all so happy that it did not matter.  The last thing Margery thought of, as she went to sleep at night, was the dear, smooth little garden, with its funny foot-path, and with the little sticks standing at the end of the rows, labeled “lettuce,” “beets,” “helianthus,” and so on.

“I have a garden!  I have a garden!” thought Margery, and then she went off to dreamland.

THE LITTLE COTYLEDONS

This is another story about Margery’s garden.