here thinks he's going to get some
corn up in this soil!"

The watcher will find plenty to do when the time comes to pick the
stones out of the freshly turned-over earth. It is his work to get upon
a high place where he can survey the whole garden and detect the more
obvious rocks.

"Here is a big fella over here, Steve," he may say. Or: "Just run your
rake a little over in that corner. I'll bet you'll find a nest of them
there."

"Plymouth Rock" is a funny thing to call any particularly offensive
boulder, and is sure to get a laugh, especially if you kid the digger
good-naturedly about being a Pilgrim and landing on it. He may even give
it to you to keep.

Just as a matter of convenience for the worker, watchers have sometimes
gone to the trouble of keeping count of the number of stones thrown
out. This is done by shouting out the count after each stone has been
tossed. It makes a sort of game of the thing, and in this spirit the
digger may be urged on to make a record.

"That's forty-eight, old man! Come on now, make her fifty. Attaboy,
forty-nine! Only one more to go. We-want-fifty-we-want-fifty-we-want
fifty."

And not only stones will be found, but queer objects which have got
themselves buried in the ground during the winter-months and have become
metamorphosed, so they are half way between one thing and another. As
the digger holds one of these _objets dirt_ gingerly between his thumb
and forefinger the watcher has plenty of opportunity to shout out:

"You'd better save that. It may come in handy some day. What is it,
Eddie? Your old beard?"

And funny cracks like that.

Here is where it is going to be difficult to keep to your resolution
about not helping. After the digging, and stoning, and turning-over has
been done, and the ground is all nice and soft and loamy, the idea of
running a rake softly over the susceptible surface and leaving a
beautiful even design in its wake, is almost too tempting to be
withstood.

[Illustration: "Atta boy, forty-nine: Only one more to go!"]

The worker himself will do all that he can to make it hard for you. He
will rake with evident delight, much longer than is necessary, back and
forth, across and back, cocking his head and surveying the pattern and
fixing it up along the edges with a care which is nothing short of
insulting considering the fact that the whole thing has got to be mussed
up again when the planting begins.

If you feel that you can no longer st