it is not
healthful for children to be too white. Just try a little experiment
yourself. Take a flat stone and put it over some grass. In a week or so
lift up the stone and see what has happened."

Hal and Mab did this, after they had helped their father put the boards on
the celery. Then, a week later, they lifted up the stone which they had
laid over a spot on the lawn.

"Why, the green grass has all turned white!" cried Hal. And so it had.

"That's how my celery will turn," said his father. "The grass grew pale
from being in the dark so long. It did not like it, and if you left the
stone there too long the grass would die. Now take it away and in a day
or so the grass will be green again."

And that's exactly what happened. The sun had tanned the grass green as it
tans children brown at the seashore.

One day, when Mab and Hal had started out with their father who was going
to show them how to dig potatoes, which is not as easy as it sounds, the
children suddenly heard a yelping and barking sound in Mr. Porter's
garden.

"There's Roly-Poly in trouble again!" called Mr. Blake.

"Yes, and he's hurt, too!" added Hal, for the little poodle was yelping as
if in pain.

"Oh, what has happened to him?" cried Mab. "Hurry, Daddy, please, and
see!"

CHAPTER XI

GATHERING CROPS

Hal, Mab and their father ran to the gate in the fence that was between
their yard and the garden of Mr. Porter. Down where their neighbor's lima
beans were planted, and where they were climbing up the poles, they heard
the barking and yelping of Roly-Poly sounding loudly.

"He's there!" cried Mab.

"Here, Roly! Come here! Come on, little doggie!" called Hal, thinking, for
a moment, that perhaps his pet was barking at a cat, as sometimes Roly
did, though he really would not have hurt pussy.

"Why doesn't he come?" asked Mab, coming to a stop, while her father
looked around, trying to see the poodle among the growing things in the
garden.

"Maybe he's caught and can't come," suggested Hal.

"Caught how?" asked Mab.

"Well, maybe he's all tangled up in the bean vines like he was in the
morning glories the day he sat down in the fly paper," Hal answered.

"Oh, Roly! Are you hurt?" cried Mab.

"Bow-wow! Ki-yi!" was all the answer the little poodle dog gave, and,
though it might have meant a great deal in dog language Mab and Hal could
not understand it. But Roly-Poly was trying to make his friends know that
something had hap