d, when she got a chance. "He means that
this land has not been ploughed before, or not for many years; it will
be hard to turn the soil, and one horse could not pull the plough,"
said her father. So Margery had learned what "green land" was.

The man was for two hours ploughing the little strip of land. He drove
the sharp end of the plough into the soil, and held it firmly so, while
the horses dragged it along in a straight line. Margery found it
fascinating to see the long line of dark earth and green grass come
rolling up and turn over, as the knife passed it. She could see that
it took real skill and strength to keep the line even, and to avoid the
stones. Sometimes the plough struck a hidden stone, and then the man
was jerked almost off his feet. But he only laughed, and said, "Tough
piece of land; be a lot better the second year."

When he had ploughed, the man went back to his cart and unloaded
another farm implement. This one was like a three-cornered platform of
wood, with a long, curved, strong rake under it. It was called a
harrow, and it looked like this:--

The man harnessed the horses to it, and then he stood on the platform
and drove all over the strip of land. It was fun to watch, but perhaps
it was a little hard to do. The man's weight kept the harrow steady,
and let the teeth of the rake scratch and cut the ground up, so that it
did not stay in ridges.

"He scrambles the ground, father!" said Margery.

"It needs scrambling," laughed her father. "We are going to get more
weeds than we want on this green land, and the more the ground is
broken, the fewer there will be."

After the ploughing and harrowing, the man drove off, and Margery's
father said he would do the rest of the work in the late afternoons,
when he came home from business; they could not afford too much help,
he said, and he had learned to take care of a garden when he was a boy.
So Margery did not see any more done until the next day.

But the next day there was hard work for Margery's father! Every bit
of that "scrambled" turf had to be broken up still more with a mattock
and a spade, and then the pieces which were full of grass-roots had to
be taken on a fork and shaken, till the earth fell out; then the grass
was thrown to one side. That would not have had to be done if the land
had been ploughed in the fall; the grass would have rotted in the
ground, and would have made fertilizer for the plants. Now, Margery's
f