ge germ of life, which starts it growing after it is planted.

"So, instead of one seed there are hundreds, as in a watermelon or
muskmelon. And nearly all of them are fertile, or good, so that other
melons may be raised from them.

"You see I only bought a small package of tomato seeds, and yet from them
we will have hundreds of tomatoes, and each tomato may have a hundred
seeds or more, and each of those seeds may be grown into a vine that will
have hundreds of tomatoes on, each with a hundred seeds in it and each of
these seeds--"

"Oh, Daddy! Please stop!" begged Mab with a laugh. "It's like the story of
the rats and the grains of corn!"

"Yes, there is no end to the increase that Mother Nature gives to us,"
said Daddy Blake. "The earth is a wonderful place. It is like a big
arithmetic table--it multiplies one seed into many."

The long Summer vacation was now at hand. Hal and Mab did not have to go
to school, and they could spend more time in the garden with their mother,
with Uncle Pennywait or Aunt Lolly, while Daddy Blake, every chance he
had, used the hoe often to keep down the weeds.

"There is nothing like hoeing to make your garden, a success," he told the
children.

"Do they hoe on big farms?" asked Hal.

"Well, on some, yes. I'll take you children to a farm, perhaps before the
Summer is over, and you can see how they do it. Instead of hoeing, though,
where there is a big field of corn or potatoes, the farmer runs a
cultivator through the rows. The cultivator is like a lot of hoes joined
together, and it loosens the dirt, cuts down the weeds and piles the soft,
brown soil around the roots of the plants just where it is most needed.
But our garden is too small for a horse cultivator--that is one drawn by a
horse. The one I shove along by hand is enough for me."

Of course Hal and Mab did not spend all their time in the garden. They
sometimes wanted to play with their boy and girl chums. For though it was
fun to watch the things growing, to help them by hoeing, by keeping away
the weeds and the bugs and worms, yet there was work in all this. And
Daddy Blake believed, as do many fathers, that "all work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy." So Hal and Mab had their play times.

One day Mrs. Blake asked Hal and Mab to pick as many of the ripe tomatoes
they could find on the vines.

"Are we going to have another store and sell them?" asked Hal.

"No, I am going to can some, and make chili sauce of the