at are large enough to examine easily with only a
magnifying glass like this one. Some we cut open and examine carefully
inside to see how the new leaves are to be fed, and then we plant others
and watch them grow."

"I'd like to know why you never told me about that before?" demanded
Ethel Brown. "I'm going to get all the grains and fruits I can right off
and plant them. Is all that stuff in a horse chestnut leaf-food?"

"The horse chestnut is a hungry one, isn't it?"

"I made some bulbs blossom by putting them in a tall glass in a dark
place and bringing them into the light when they had started to sprout,"
said Ethel Blue, "but I think this is more fun. I'm going to plant some,
too."

"Grandmother Emerson always has beautiful bulbs. She has plenty in her
garden that she allows to stay there all winter, and they come up and
are scrumptious very early in the Spring. Then she takes some of them
into the house and keeps them in the dark, and they blossom all through
the cold weather."

"Mother likes bulbs, too," said Dorothy, "crocuses and hyacinths and
Chinese lilies--but I never cared much about them. Somehow the bulb
itself looks too fat. I don't care much for fat things or people."

"Don't think of it as fat; it's the food supply."

"Well, I think they're greedy things, and I'm not going ever to bother
with them. I'll leave them to Mother, but I am really going to plant a
garden this summer. I think it will be loads of fun."

"We haven't much room for a garden here," said Helen, "but we always
have some vegetables and a few flowers."

"Why don't we have a fine one this summer, Helen?" demanded Ethel Brown.
"You're learning a lot about the way plants grow, I should think you'd
like to grow them."

"I believe I should if you girls would help me. There never has been any
member of the family who was interested, and I wasn't wild about it
myself, and I just never got started."

"The truth is," confessed Ethel Brown, "if we don't have a good garden
Dorothy here will have something that will put ours entirely in the
shade."

The girls all laughed. They never had known Dorothy until the previous
summer. When she came to live in Rosemont in September they had learned
that she was extremely energetic and that she never abandoned any plan
that she attempted. The Ethels knew, therefore, that if Dorothy was
going to have a garden the next summer they'd better have a garden, too,
or else they would see little of he