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"And may we help?" asked Mab. "Yes, come on to the garden." Daddy Blake had asked Uncle Pennywait, that day, to smooth off a plowed and harrowed place ready for the cabbage plants to be put in that evening, and the long rows, dug in the brown soil, were now waiting. "Where did you get the cabbage plants?" Mab wanted to know.
"A potato is not like other things that grow in the garden," said Uncle Pennywait. "It does not have its seeds separate from it, as beans have theirs in a pod, or as corn has its kernels or seeds on a cob, or a pumpkin or apple has seeds inside it. A potato's seeds are part of itself, buried in the white part that we cook for the table, and each potato has in it many seeds or eyes.
In each chunk their uncle cut the children noticed several "eyes." "What are you doing?" asked Hal. "I am getting ready to plant a second crop of potatoes," said Uncle Pennywait. "The first ones I planted in my garden were early ones. Soon we will be eating them on the table. They are not the kind that will keep well all winter, and I am planting that kind now.
"Come over here and I'll show you," called Uncle Pennywait when he had laughed at the funny looks on the faces of the two children. "See," he went on, "these are the 'eyes' of the potato, though the right name, of course, is seeds." He pointed to the little spots you may see on any potato you pick up, unless it is one to small to have them.
"I'm going to buy ice cream," said Uncle Pennywait. "I never yet had all the ice cream I wanted. But I will when I get that ten dollars." "Ten dollars is an awful lot of ice cream!" said Mab, sighing. "He's only joking," laughed Aunt Lolly. "You children mustn't let him win the prize. Keep busy in your gardens, and get it yourselves."
Here, I'll cut you each a little stick for a measure. You don't need to worry about the rows, as Uncle Pennywait marked them just the right distance apart as he made them." So after that Hal and Mab measured, with sticks Daddy Blake gave them to get one cabbage plant just as far from the one next to it in the row as Daddy Blake wanted.
Hal and Mab lived with Daddy and Mother Blake in a nice house in a small city, and with them lived Uncle Pennywait and Aunt Lollypop. These were not their real names. Uncle Pennywait was called that because he so often said to Hal and Mab: "Wait a minute and I'll give you a penny!"
Two or three days after their father had told Hal and Mab why seeds grow, the children, coming home from school, saw something strange in their garden. There was a man, with a team of horses and the brown earth was being torn up by a big shiny thing which the horses were pulling as the man drove them. "Oh, what's that in our garden?" cried Hal to Uncle Pennywait.
Oh, don't tell me the garden is on fire?" cried Aunt Lolly. "How could a green garden burn?" asked Uncle Pennywait, laughing. "It's somebody cows in our garden in Hal's corn, too, I expect," said Daddy Blake. "Mr. Porter saw them and told me. We ought to have Little Boy Blue here to drive them out with his horn. But I'll have to use a stick, I guess." "Oh!" cried Hal "Cows in my corn!
Well, to begin with, these are called egg plants because they are shaped like an egg you see, only much larger, of course," and Uncle Pennywait held up one he had cut off the stem where it had been growing. "They taste a little like eggs because, when they are fried, some persons dip them in egg batter. But first they cut them in slices, after they are peeled, and soak them in salt water."
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