he
could move into the country, and he took a little house a short
distance outside the town where his new position was. Margery was
delighted. And the very first thing she said, when her father told her
about it, was, "Oh, may I have a garden? MAY I have a garden?"

Margery's mother was almost as eager for a garden as she was, and
Margery's father said he expected to live on their vegetables all the
rest of his life! So it was soon agreed that the garden should be the
first thing attended to.

Behind the little house were apple trees, a plum tree, and two or three
pear trees; then came a stretch of rough grass, and then a stone wall,
with a gate leading into the pasture. It was in the grassy land that
the garden was to be. A big piece was to be used for corn and peas and
beans, and a little piece at the end was to be saved for Margery.

"What shall we have in it?" asked her mother.

"Flowers," said Margery, with shining eyes,--"blue, and white, and
yellow, and pink,--every kind of flower!"

"Surely, flowers," said her mother, "and shall we not have a little
salad garden in the midst, as they do in England?"

"What is a salad garden?" Margery asked.

"It is a garden where you have all the things that make nice salad,"
said her mother, laughing, for Margery was fond of salads; "you have
lettuce, and endive, and romaine, and parsley, and radishes, and
cucumbers, and perhaps little beets and young onions."

"Oh! how good it sounds!" said Margery. "I vote for the salad garden."

That very evening, Margery's father took pencil and paper, and drew out
a plan for her garden; first, they talked it all over, then he drew
what they decided on; it looked like the diagram on the next page.

"The outside strip is for flowers," said Margery's father, "and the
next marks mean a footpath, all the way round the beds; that is so you
can get at the flowers to weed and to pick; there is a wider path
through the middle, and the rest is all for rows of salad vegetables."

"Papa, it is glorious!" said Margery.

Papa laughed. "I hope you will still think it glorious when the
weeding time comes," he said, "for you know, you and mother have
promised to take care of this garden, while I take care of the big one."

"I wouldn't NOT take care of it for anything!" said Margery. "I want
to feel that it is my very own."

Her father kissed her, and said it was certainly her "very own."

Two evenings after that, when Margery was