ore she looked at them the more it seemed to
Margery that they looked exactly as the radish looked when it first
came up. "Do you suppose," Margery said to herself, "that lettuce and
radish look alike? They don't look alike in the market!"

Day by day the lettuce grew, and soon the little round leaves were
easier to examine; they certainly were very much like radish leaves.

Then, one morning, while she was searching the ground for signs of
seeds, Margery discovered the beets. In irregular patches on the row,
hints of green were coming. The next day and the next they grew, until
the beet leaves were big enough to see.

Margery looked. Then she looked again. Then she wrinkled her forehead.
"Can we have made a mistake?" she thought. "Do you suppose we can have
planted all radishes?"

For those little beet leaves were almost round, and they grew two on a
stem, precisely like the lettuce and the radish; except for the size,
all three rows looked alike.

It was too much for Margery. She ran to the house and found her
father. Her little face was so anxious that he thought something
unpleasant had happened. "Papa," she said, all out of breath, "do you
think we could have made a mistake about my garden? Do you think we
could have put radishes in all the rows?"

Father laughed. "What makes you think such a thing?" he asked.

"Papa," said Margery, "the little leaves all look exactly alike! every
plant has just two tiny leaves on it, and shaped the same; they are
roundish, and grow out of the stem at the same place."

Papa's eyes began to twinkle. "Many of the dicotyledonous plants look
alike at the beginning," he said, with a little drawl on the big word.
That was to tease Margery, because she always wanted to know the big
words she heard.

"What's 'dicotyledonous'?" said Margery, carefully.

"Wait till I come home to-night, dear," said her father, "and I'll tell
you."

That evening Margery was waiting eagerly for him, when her father
finished his supper. Together they went to the garden, and father
examined the seedlings carefully. Then he pulled up a little radish
plant and a tiny beet.

"These little leaves," he said, "are not the real leaves of the plant;
they are only little food-supply leaves, little pockets to hold food
for the plant to live on till it gets strong enough to push up into the
air. As soon as the real leaves come out and begin to draw food from
the air, these little substitutes wi