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And Uncle Pennywait shall have a prize for his potatoes, while as for Mother well we'll each give her a prize for the many good meals she got for us while we were working in the garden, and she'll get a special prize for her carrots, which will give you children red cheeks this Winter." "Hurray!" cried Mab. "Hurray!" echoed Hal. "It's better than Fourth of July."
"You may have one pumpkin for a Hallowe'en lantern, maybe, but pumpkin pies are what Aunt Lolly is thinking of, I guess." "Indeed I am," she said. "When I was a girl we used to raise many pumpkins in the cornfield at home. So I'll raise my pumpkins between your rows of corn, Hal." "That's the way to do it," said Uncle Pennywait. "I think I'll raise potatoes.
The long yellow vegetables, like big ice cream cones, Uncle Pennywait said, were stored in a dark place in the cellar. "You have a fine crop of carrots," said Daddy Blake. "Do you think I'll win the prize?" asked his wife. "Well, I wouldn't be surprised," he answered. "Oh, if she should!" exclaimed Hal to his sister.
Our garden has been a great success, even if the hail did spoil some things and bugs and worms part of other crops." The potatoes were really Uncle Pennywait's crop at least he had planted most of them and called them his, for the tomatoes were Daddy Blake's. And Uncle Pennywait kept careful count of every quart and bushel of the potatoes that were eaten, or put away for Winter.
"Well, you children certainly haven't forgotten to ask questions since your Daddy began telling you things about the woods, fields, flowers and birds," laughed Uncle Pennywait. "Let me see, now.
Now you watch me." Uncle Pennywait had smoothed off a nice bit of his garden where, as yet, he had planted nothing, and into the long earth-rows of this he now began to plant his potato seed. He walked along the rows with a bag of the cut-up pieces hung around his neck, and as he dropped in the white chunks he covered them with dirt by using a hoe.
Aunt Lolly and Uncle Pennywait, as well as Daddy Blake, had planted their parts of the garden, and the land around the Blake house looked smooth and brown, with, here and there, a little green showing. "I know what I'm going to do with that ten dollar gold piece prize when I win it," said Uncle Pennywait. "What are you going to do?" asked his wife.
"It's a man plowing," said Hal's Uncle. "But won't he spoil the garden?" Mab wanted to know. "He's just starting to make it," Uncle Pennywait answered. "Didn't Daddy Blake tell you that the ground must be plowed or chopped up, and then finely pulverized or smoothed, so the seeds would grow better?" "Oh, yet, so he did," Hal said.
"Sometimes farmers go through their potato field and knock the bugs from the vines into a can full of kerosene oil," said Uncle Pennywait, "or they may use another poison instead of Paris Green. But the bugs must be killed if we are to have potatoes." Just then Mab saw Aunt Lolly going into her garden with a bottle in her hand. "Are you going to poison bugs too?" asked the little girl.
And the next day they rode on the elephant's back, and also on a camel's and they went in the big parade. Oh! it was just wonderful the adventures they had! Hal and Mab lived with their papa and mamma, and Aunt Lolly, in a fine house in the city. But they often went to the country and to other places where they had good times. In the family was also Uncle Pennywait.
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