Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/182

 pipe and wipe his forehead) was the idea of starting a Nassau County Weed Show. In a Flower Show he would have no chance at all; but in a well-conducted Weed Show he ought to get a prize. His plantain-weeds were remarkable, both in number and size. And in a good Weed Show there should also be prizes for the greatest number of croquet hoops lost in one season, or balls disappeared among rhododendron bushes, or velocipedes left out over night. In such competitions, he believed, the family would rank high.

But the plantain-weeds were his special concern. On warm evenings he often spent an hour or so grubbing them up. Sometimes it seemed as though the lawn was really more plantain than grass. But it is quite good fun pulling them up, because you are never sure whether the roots will come or not. If you are careful to get hold of all the leaves, and give a little twist, the chances are that the roots will come too. The game is to keep score, and count how many roots come and how many don't.

What bothered Mr. Mistletoe, in these adventures, was that anything so plentiful as those weeds should be so useless. For he liked to imagine that almost everything is useful in one way