hal and mab ran after their father as he hurried out into the yard. they could hear sammie crying more loudly now, and above his voice sounded a growling and barking noise.
one part of the fence, between the blake yard and that where mr. porter had made his garden, was low, so that the two children could look over. they saw sammie standing near the fence, greatly frightened, and looking at a tangle of morning glory vines in which something was wiggling around and making a great fuss.
"oh, what is it?" asked hal.
"it's a—it's a lion!" cried the frightened sammie. "a great—great big lion, all fuzzy like!"
"oh, it couldn't be a lion, sammie," said mr. blake. "tell me what it is that scared you."
"'tis a lion," said sammie again. "he ran after me an' i ran an' he ran in the bushes an' he's there now. he barked at me!"
"ho! if he barked it's a dog," cried hal. "where is he, sammie?"
"in there," and sammie pointed to the tangle of morning glory vines. just then mab saw something that made her call out:
"why it is a dog. it's our dog—roly-poly!"
"are you sure?" asked her father. "roly is over at mr. thompson's house you know," for the little poodle had been sent away while the garden was being made. mr. thompson had planted nothing, having too small a yard.
"i don't care!" exclaimed mab. "i did see roly. he's in the bushes there—under the morning glories."
"well, if it's your dog roly i would not be so frightened of him," said sammie. "only i thinked he was a lion."
"here, roly! roly-poly, come on out!" cried hal, and out came a very queer-looking dog indeed. it was roly, but how he had changed. he was all stuck over with leaves, grass and bits of bark from the trees. he certainly did "fuzzy," as sammie had said, and not at all like the nice, clean poodle he had been.
"oh, whatever is the matter with him?" cried mab.
"he's got a lot of leaves stuck on him," added hal. "come here, roly, and i'll pull 'em off for you."
roly came running over to hal, but when the little boy tried to get the leaves, grass and bits of bark off his pet he found out what was the matter.
"roly's all stuck up in fly paper!" cried hal. "look!"
"in fly paper?" asked mr. blake. "are you sure?"
"yes, he must have sat down in some fly paper, and it stuck to him all over, and then he rolled in the leaves and grass," answered hal.
"and then the leaves and grass stuck to the fly paper," added mab. "oh, you poor roly-poly!"
the little poodle dog must have known how he looked, and he must have felt quite badly, for he just stretched out at the feet of hal, who had jumped over the fence, and he howled and howled and howled, roly-poly did.
"i wonder how it happened?" asked mr. blake. "but we must take roly-poly in the house and wash him. then he'll feel better and look better. did he scare you very much, sammie?"
"a—a little bit. when i saw him in our yard, all fuzzy like, i thought sure he was a lion."
mrs. porter came out, having heard her little boy crying, and when she saw roly-poly she laughed.
then she said:
"you poor dog. come over and i'll squirt the hose on you. that will take off some of the fly paper."
"oh, let me squirt it!" cried hal. "roly loves to be squirted on! let me do it!"
"i'm going to help," added mab.
"an' me, too!" called sammie.
"they'll drown the poor dog," spoke mr. blake, laughing. "i guess i'd better take a hand in this myself."
"what's the matter?" asked aunt lolly from the back steps. "is the house on fire?" she was always afraid that would happen.
"no, it's just roly-poly and some sticky fly paper," answered mr. blake. "he must have run home to get a bath after he got all tangled up in the sticky stuff at the thompson house."
by using the hose, and by greasing the fly paper, which really loosened it more than water did, and then by using soap suds and a brush, roly-poly was finally cleaned. then on their way to school hal and mab stopped at the thompson home to find out what had happened.
"roly-poly was very good, all the while he was here," said mrs. thompson, "though at first he was lonesome for you. he would have run back to your house if i had let him out, but i knew he might make trouble in your garden so i kept him here.
"this morning i put some of the sticky fly paper around the house and left a window open in the room where roly was sleeping. the wind must have blown the sticky paper on his curly coat of hair and this so frightened him that he jumped out of the window and ran back home to you."
"only he went in the yard next door, instead of in ours," said mab, "and he hid under the morning glory vines."
"and on his way," added hal, "he rolled in dried leaves and grass until he was all covered, and he looked twice as big as he is now."
"and sammie thought he was a lion," went on mab.
"are you going to bring roly-poly back to me to keep?" asked mrs. thompson.
"thank you, no," answered hal. "daddy says our garden is growing so well now that roly can't do much harm. besides we're going to teach him he mustn't dig holes, to hide his bones, in places where we have things planted. so we'll keep roly now."
"and we're much obliged to you for being so nice to him," added mab, "and we're sorry he spoiled your fly paper."
"oh, i have plenty more fly paper," laughed mrs. thompson. "i'm only sorry poor roly was so stuck up. good-bye!"
hal and mab hurried on to school, laughing over what had happened to their pet poodle. when their lessons were done they went back to their garden, anxious to see if roly had been good, and had not dug up any corn or beans.
"everything is all right," said mab, as she looked at her bush beans, which were now in blossom. soon the blossoms would drop off and in their places would come tiny bean pods.
"oh, see uncle pennyweight!" cried mab, when she had found that roly was peacefully sleeping on the shady porch. "what's he doing?"
"planting something, i guess," replied hal after he had looked at his growing corn, and hoed around a few hills.
"and aunt lolly is working in her part of the garden," went on mab. "i wonder if they'll win that ten dollar gold piece prize, hal?"
"i hope one of us wins it, mab. if i win i'll give you half."
"and i'll give you half if i win, 'cause you helped me hoe my beans one day when there was so many weeds in 'em."
daddy blake had put the ten dollar gold piece in a little box on the dining room mantle, and every day hal or mab looked to make sure the prize was there.
"what you doin' uncle pennywait?" asked mab as she and her brother went over to the vacant lot next door, where part of the blake garden had been planted.
"i'm taking the eyes out of the potatoes," answered uncle pennywait.
"eyes out of potatoes!" cried hal. "i didn't know they had any."
"of course they have!" laughed his uncle. "else how could they see to get out of their brown skin-jackets when they want to go swimming in the kettle of hot water?"
"oh, he's only fooling us; isn't he aunt lolly?" asked hal. his aunt was hoeing some weeds away from between the hills of cucumbers she had planted, for she was going to raise some of them, as well as pumpkins, which last had been planted in between the rows of hal's corn.
"well, uncle pennywait may be fooling you a little," said aunt lolly, "but i did see him cutting some eyes from the potatoes."
hal and mab looked at one another. they did not know what to think now. it was seldom that both aunt lolly and uncle pennywait joked at the same time.
"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. the spots are near the ends and in the middle, and they look like little dimples. some of them may look very much like eyes, and that is what most gardeners and farmers call them, but they are really the potato's seeds.
mab and hal watched what uncle pennywait was doing. he had a basket in which were some large potatoes and these he was cutting into chunks, letting them fall into another basket. 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. i am going to win the ten dollar prize by raising a bigger crop of potatoes than you can raise of corn or beans, little ones," and he smiled at hal and mab.
then he went on cutting the eyes out of the potatoes, while the children watched him. they saw that each potato chunk had in it two or three of the queer dimple-spots.
"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.
"of course i could plant whole potatoes, one in each hill, but that would be wasting seed, so i cut the potatoes up into chunks and plant the little chunks, each one with two or more seeds in it."
"and do you only plant one chunk?" asked mab.
"no, i drop in two or three, according to the size and the number of eyes. this is done so that if one set of seeds doesn't grow the other will. 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.
"when my potatoes grow up into nice green vines, and the striped bugs come to have a feast on them, you may help me drive the bad creatures away," said uncle pennywait to the children. "in fact some of my early potatoes need looking after now."
"are there bugs on them?" asked mab, when her uncle had finished his planting.
"indeed there are! come and i'll show you."
over they went to the early-potato part of uncle pennywait's garden. there, on many of the green vines, were a lot of blackish and yellowish bugs, crawling and eating the leaves.
"we'll just give them a dinner of paris green," said uncle pennywait, "and they won't eat any more of my vines."
"what's paris green?" asked mab.
"it is a deadly poison, for grown folks or children as well as bugs, and you must never touch it, or handle it, unless i am with you, or your father is near," said uncle pennywait. "here is some of it."
he showed the children a bright, green powder, some of which he stirred into a sprinkling pot full of water. this water he sprayed over the potato vines.
"the poison in the water goes on the potato leaves," explained uncle pennywait, "and when the bugs eat the leaves they also eat the poison, and die. we have to kill them or they would eat away the leaves of the vines until they all died, and we would have no potatoes. the potato bugs are very harmful, and we must get rid of them."
then he let hal and mab sprinkle the potato vines with the paris green, afterward making the children carefully wash their hands so there would be no danger.
"is that the only way to drive away the potato bugs?" asked hal.
"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.
"no, i am going to make a cucumber grow inside this," was the answer.
"make a cucumber grow in a bottle?" exclaimed hal. "why, how funny!"
"let's go see!" cried mab, and together they ran over to aunt lolly's garden.
