hink about the money? I wish dollars grew on trees, and all we had to
do when we wanted any would be to go out and pick them. What fun we'd
have! I do want to go to the Fair so much, though. If only there was
some way to earn the money!"

She wandered down to the melon patch, the pride of her childish heart,
and sat down on one of the green balls to meditate on the subject.

"I never saw the beat how your melons do grow," exclaimed a voice behind
her, as Mrs. Grinnell, on her way to the brown house, paused to admire
the tempting fruit. "If there was just some way of getting them into the
city, you might make a pretty penny off them. Now, mine don't begin to
be as big as yours, and there aren't half so many on the vines. That's a
whopper you are sitting on. You ought to take it to the Fair--"

"Why, Mrs. Grinnell, do folks take _melons_ to the Fair?"

"Yes, indeed, every year. Why, I've seen lots there that weren't as big
as yours. Of course it's the biggest that win the ribbons, and you might
not stand a show, but there would be no harm trying. I am intending to
enter my two mammoth pumpkins and that Hubbard squash, along with my
corn."

"Do you s'pose Gail would let me?"

"Yes, I think so. I'll take it in with mine if you like. I am to lug
Faith's cake."

"Oh, then I'll do it! These two whollipers. That one is almost as big as
the one I play is my armchair. The rest are too little to have a chance,
aren't they? Maybe they will be big enough by Fair time, though. They
have two weeks more to grow in."

"No telling what they will do in that time," laughed Mrs. Grinnell,
moving briskly away up the path, leaving Peace still perched on top of
the largest melon busily making her fortune from her small garden patch.

"If only we hadn't sold Black Prince," she mourned, "we could just cart
these melons into Martindale and make a whole lot on them. There, why
didn't I think of that before? Mike peddles garden truck in the city,
'most every day. I'll just have him tote these along. I've got--let me
see--twelve, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one good ones, besides my big
fellows. I wonder if that will be enough. I'm going right over and see
Mike now. He is at home today; I saw him."

She skipped away through the garden to the O'Hara place, some distance
below them, and finding the red-haired boy grinding an ax in the
dooryard, she startled him by her breathless demand, "How much do
watermelons sell for in the city?"

"Shu