United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With Jonas’s help, Rollo planned his garden beautifully. He put double rows of peas and beans all around, so that when they should grow up, they would enclose his garden like a fence or hedge, and make it look snug and pleasant within. Then, he had a row of corn, for he thought he should like some green corn himself to roast.
He began to recollect how much trouble he had given his parents, when riding with them, without thinking of it at the time. He did not say any thing to Jonas about it, but he secretly resolved to try Jonas’s experiment the very next time he went to ride. He did so, and in a very short time his father and mother both perceived that there was, some how or other, a great change in his manners.
Rollo ran up to his room, and rigged himself out, as well as he could, putting one of Jonas’s great coats over him, and wearing an old broad-brimmed straw hat on his head. Thus equipped, he took his hoe, and sallied forth in the rain. At first he thought it was good fun; but, in about half an hour, he began to be tired, and to feel very uncomfortable.
He accordingly asked his father whether it would not be a good plan to plant what he had already dug, before he dug any more. “What is Jonas’s advice?” said his father. “Why, he told me I had better dig it all up first; but I thought that, if I planted part first, those things would be growing while I am digging up the rest of the ground.”
“Conditions on which I let Rollo have two pieces of land to cultivate; the one to be called his working-garden, and the other his playing-garden. In cultivating his working-garden, he is to take Jonas’s advice, and to follow it faithfully in every respect. He is not to go and work upon his playing-garden, at any time, when there is any work that ought to be done on his working-garden.
Rollo could not help seeing that that was his real motive; and he promised his father that he would go on, though it was tiresome. It was not the hard labor of the digging that fatigued him, for, by following Jonas’s directions, he found it easy work; but it was the sameness of it. He longed for something new.
He ran along with it, forgetting Jonas’s advice not to hurry, and thinking that the reason why it seemed so light was because he was so strong. When he got to the coal-bin, the chips would not come out easily. They were so large that they had got wedged between the sides of the basket, and he had hard work to get them out.
James and Rollo remained, according to Jonas’s proposal, near the bars, while he went along the path towards the spring. Rollo and James had a fine time gathering blackberries, until, at last, they saw the cows coming, lowing along the path. Presently they saw Jonas’s head among the bushes. When he came up to the boys, he told them it was lucky that they did not go with him. “Why?” said Rollo.
Besides, James said it was sundown, and time for him to go home; but he promised to come the next morning, if his mother would let him, as soon as he had finished his lessons. Keeping Tally. Rollo and James began their work the next day about the middle of the forenoon, determined to obey Jonas’s directions exactly, and to work industriously for an hour.
Word Of The Day