ever they liked there.

Phyllis had planted mignonette and nasturtium and Virginia Stock in
hers. The seeds came up, and though they looked just like weeds, Phyllis
believed that they would bear flowers some day. The Virginia Stock
justified her faith quite soon, and her garden was gay with a band of
bright little flowers, pink and white and red and mauve.

"I can't weed for fear I pull up the wrong things," she used to say
comfortably; "it saves such a lot of work."

Peter sowed vegetable seeds in his--carrots and onions and turnips.
The seed was given to him by the farmer who lived in the nice
black-and-white, wood-and-plaster house just beyond the bridge. He
kept turkeys and guinea fowls, and was a most amiable man. But Peter's
vegetables never had much of a chance, because he liked to use the earth
of his garden for digging canals, and making forts and earthworks for
his toy soldiers. And the seeds of vegetables rarely come to much in
a soil that is constantly disturbed for the purposes of war and
irrigation.

Bobbie planted rose-bushes in her garden, but all the little new leaves
of the rose-bushes shrivelled and withered, perhaps because she moved
them from the other part of the garden in May, which is not at all the
right time of year for moving roses. But she would not own that they
were dead, and hoped on against hope, until the day when Perks came up
to see the garden, and told her quite plainly that all her roses were as
dead as doornails.

"Only good for bonfires, Miss," he said. "You just dig 'em up and burn
'em, and I'll give you some nice fresh roots outer my garden; pansies,
and stocks, and sweet willies, and forget-me-nots. I'll bring 'em along
to-morrow if you get the ground ready."

So next day she set to work, and that happened to be the day when Mother
had praised her and the others about not quarrelling. She moved the
rose-bushes and carried them to the other end of the garden, where the
rubbish heap was that they meant to make a bonfire of when Guy Fawkes'
Day came.

Meanwhile Peter had decided to flatten out all his forts and earthworks,
with a view to making a model of the railway-tunnel, cutting,
embankment, canal, aqueduct, bridges, and all.

So when Bobbie came back from her last thorny journey with the dead
rose-bushes, he had got the rake and was using it busily.

"_I_ was using the rake," said Bobbie.

"Well, I'm using it now," said Peter.

"But I had it first," said Bobbie.