Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/156

 bought a packet of seeds. They bought zinnias, because the picture on the seed-packet looked so pretty, though not any prettier than the young gardeners themselves bending and raking and arranging a border of stones. But once dug and planted the gardens had been rather neglected, except by Donny who evidently thought them twin beds and slept in them by turns. Blythe, learning to ride a velocipede, used to trundle through them. In fact, few people realized that they were gardens at all; they simply thought them two more patches where the grass hadn't happened to grow. So, when the workmen were looking about for a convenient place to pile the bricks from the kitchen chimney, they dumped them all on top of the two gardens.

I don't think the gardeners worried much about this, for now so many interesting things were happening, and the zinnia seeds, still underground, said nothing. But presently Mr. Mistletoe, who had plans of his own for those bricks, hired Christopher and Buzzy to help him (at the rate of one cent for every twenty-five bricks) and they stacked them up neatly against the side of the garage.

Helen, by this time, had abandoned any