Davy was looking at the little round, brown kernels that the Chief Gardener had said were radish seeds, and the light little flakes that were to grow into lettuce.
"What makes seeds so different?" he asked soberly.
"Ah, Davy, that is a hard question," answered the Chief Gardener. "A great many very great people have tried to answer it."
He opened a little paper and held it out for them to see.
"What funny little feather-tops!" said Prue.
"Like little darts," said Davy. "What are they?"
"Marigold seeds. They are very light, and the little tufts or wings are to carry them through the air, so they will be scattered and sown by the wind. Many seeds are given wings of different kinds. Maple seeds have a real pair of wings. Others have a tuft of down on them, so light that they are carried for miles. But many seeds are hard to explain. Plants very nearly alike grow from seeds that are not at all alike, while plants as different as can be grow from seeds that can hardly be told apart, even under the magnifying-glass."
The pots filled with the warm earth were brought up and ranged in the windows.
"How deep, and how many seeds in a pot?" asked Davy.
"That depends," the Chief Gardener answered. "I believe there is a rule that says to plant twice as deep as the seed is long, though sweet-pease and some other things are planted deeper; and you may plant more seeds than you want plants, so that enough are pretty sure to grow; four beans in each pot, Davy – two white and two colored, and three grains of corn in the large center pot."
The children planted the seeds – the Chief Gardener helping, showing how to cover them with fine earth – the corn and beans quite deeply, the sweet-pease still deeper, fully an inch or more, the smaller seeds thinly and evenly: then how to pat them down so that the earth might be lightly but snugly packed about the sleeping seeds.
"Now we will dampen them a little," he said, "and when they feel their covering getting moist, perhaps they will think of waking."
So he brought a cup of warm water, and the children dipped in their fingers and sprinkled the earth in each pot until it was quite damp. Then they drew up chairs and sat down to look at their garden, as if expecting the things to grow while they waited.
IV
I THINK SEEDS KNOW THE MONTHS
But the seeds did not sprout that day, nor the next, nor for many days after they were planted.
Prue and Davy watered them a little every morning, and were quite sure the room had been warm, but it takes sunshine, too, to make seeds think of waking from their long nap, and the sun does not always shine in January. Even when it does, it is so low in the sky, and stays such a little time each day, that it does not find its way down into the soil as it does in spring and summer time.
"You said that corn sprouts in a week," said Davy to the Chief Gardener, one morning, "and it's a week to-day since we planted it, and even the radishes are not up yet."
Prue also looked into her little row of pots, and said sadly that there was not even a little teeny-weeny speck of anything coming up that she could see.
"I'm sorry," said the Chief Gardener, "but you know I really can't make the sun shine, and even if I could, perhaps they would be slow about coming, at this season. Sometimes I think seeds know the months as well as we do, for I have known seeds to sprout in June in a place where there was very little warmth or moisture and no sunshine at all. Yes, I think the seeds know."
"And won't my pansies come at all?" whimpered little Prue.
"Oh, I think so. They only need a little more coaxing. Suppose we see just what is going on. You planted a few extra radish seeds, Davy. We will do as little folks often do – dig up one and see what has happened."
So the Chief Gardener dug down with his pocket-knife and lifted a bit of the dirt, which he looked at carefully. Then he held it to the light and let the children look. Sticking to the earth there was a seed, but it was no longer the tiny brown thing which Davy had planted. It was so large that Davy at first thought it was one of his pease, and on one side of it there was an edge of green.
"It's all right, Davy boy. They'll be up in a day or two," laughed the Chief Gardener. "Now, we'll try a pansy."
"Oh, yes, try a pansy! try a pansy!" danced little Prue, who was as happy as Davy over the sprouting of the radish.
So the Chief Gardener dug down into the pansy-pot, but just at first could not find a pansy seed, they were so small. Then he did find one, and coming out of it were two tiny pale-green leaves, and a thread of white rootlet that had started downward.
Prue clapped her hands and wanted the Chief Gardener to dig in all the pots, but he told them that it would not be good gardening to do that, and that they must be patient now, and wait. So then another anxious week went by. And all at once, one morning very early, Prue and Davy came shouting up the stairs to where the Chief Gardener was shaving.
"They're up! They're up!"
"My pansies!"
"And my radishes! They've lifted up a piece of dirt over every seed, and there's one little green point in the corn-pot, too!"
The Chief Gardener had to leave his shaving to see. Sure enough! Davy's radishes and Prue's pansies were beginning to show, and one tender shoot of Davy's corn. And in less than another week Davy's lettuce and pease and beans were breaking the ground above each seed, while Prue's garden was coming too, all but the sweet-pease, which, because of their hard shell, sprouted more slowly, even though they had been soaked in warm water before planting. But in another week they began to show, too, and everything else was quite above ground.
Then the Chief Gardener dug up one each of the extra seeds, root and all, and showed them just how they had sprouted and started to grow. He showed them how the shell or husk of the seed still clung to the two first leaves of some of the morning-glory and radish plants, how when the little plant had awakened from its long nap, it had stretched, just as a little boy would stretch, getting up out of bed, and how, being hungry, it had made its breakfast on a part of the tender kernel packed about it in the seed, and then pushed its leaves up for light and air. He also showed them how the grain of corn and the pea stayed below the ground to feed the little shoots that pushed up and the sprangled roots that were starting down to hunt for richness. But they all laughed at the beans, for the beans left only the husk below and pushed the rich kernel up into the air – coming up topsy-turvy, Davy said, while Prue thought the leaves must be very greedy to take the kernel all away from the roots, instead of leaving it where both could have a share.
And now another week passed, and other tiny leaves began to show on most of the plants. These were different shaped from the first oval or heart-shaped seed-leaves – real, natural leaves, Prue said, such as they would have when they were grown. Only the corn did not change, but just unfolded and grew larger.
And so in every pot there were tender green promises of fruit and flower. The little garden was really a garden at last.
FEBRUARY
I
LITTLE PLANTS WON'T STAND MUCH HANDLING
YET the little garden seemed to grow slowly. The sun in February was getting farther to the north, and came earlier and stayed later than it had in January, and was brighter, too. But for all that, to Davy and Prue, each new leaf came quite slowly – just a tiny point or bud at first, then a little green heart or oval or crinkly oblong with a wee stem of its own. It was very hard to see each morning, just what had grown since the morning before.
Of course they did grow – little by little, and inch by inch – just as children grow, and a good deal faster, for when they measured their bean and morning-glory vines, they found one morning that they had grown at least a half an inch since the day before, and that would be a good deal for a little boy or girl to grow in one day.
But Davy perhaps remembered the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk"