gin' long enough to hash up some of them tasty dishes for us.

If all amateur gardeners are apt to go so dippy over it, I hope I don't
catch the disease. No danger, I guess. I made my stab at it about the
third day, when Vee wanted some ground spaded up for a pansy bed. And
say, in half an hour, there, I'd worked up enough palm blisters and
backache to last me a month. It may seem sport to some people, but to me
it has all the ear-marks of plain, hard work, such as you can indulge
in reg'lar by carryin' a foldin' dinner-pail and lettin' yourself out to
a padrone.

Leon, though, just couldn't seem to let it alone. He almost made a vice
of it, to my mind. Why, say, he's out there at first crack of day,
whenever that is; and in the evenin', as soon as he has served dinner,
he sneaks out to put in a few more licks, and stays until it's so dark
he can hardly find his way back.

You know all them window-boxes he had clutterin' up the studio
apartment. Well, he insists on cratin' every last one of 'em and
expressin' 'em along; and now he has all that alleged lettuce and
parsley and carrots and so on set out in neat little rows; and when he
ain't sprinklin' 'em with the hose or dosin' 'em with fertilizer, he's
out there ticklin' 'em with a rake.

"Gee!" says I. "I thought all you had to do to a garden was just to
chuck in the seeds and let 'em grow. But accordin' to your method it
would be less trouble bringin' up a pair of twins."

"Ah-h-h-h!" says he. "But monsieur has not the passion for growing green
things."

"Thanks be, then," says I. "It would land me in the liniment ward if I
had."

I must say, though, that Vee's 'most as bad with her flowers. Honest,
when she shows me where she's planned to have this and that, and hints
that I can get busy durin' my spare time with the spade, I almost wished
we was back in town.

"What?" I gasps. "Want me to excavate all that? Hal-lup!"

"Pooh!" says Vee. "It will do you good."

Maybe she thought so. But I knew it wouldn't. So I chases up the hill to
the Ellins place, and broke in on Mr. Robert just as he's finishin'
breakfast.

"Say," says I, "you ain't got a baby-grand steam-shovel or anything like
that around the place, have you?"

He says he's sorry, but he ain't. When he hears what I'm up against,
though, he comes to the rescue noble by lendin' me one of his expert
Dago soil-disturbers, at $1.75 per--and with Vee bossin' him she got the
whole job done in half a day