Part 22

They went over to look at Davy's little peach-tree, which was fresh and green and tender, and seemed to be growing nicely.

"It should have fruit on it in three years," said the Chief Gardener.

Davy and Prue did not look very happy at this. It seemed such a long time to wait.

"It will pass before you know it," the Chief Gardener smiled.

"I shall be as old as Nellie Taber," said little Prue, who had been counting on her fingers, "but Nellie will be older, too," she added with a sigh. "So I'm afraid I can't catch up with her."

The Chief Gardener led them over to another part of the garden, where there was a bunch of green leaves, like the leaves of a violet, but when they got down to look, they found that the flowers, instead of being all blue, were speckled and spotted with white.

"Oh, Papa, where did you get those funny violets?" asked Prue. "What makes them all speckly?"

"I think," said the Chief Gardener, "that this is one of Nature's mixtures. I found it in the Crescent Lake woods last spring, and brought it home. There may be others like it, but I have never seen them. So you see, Nature makes new kinds herself, sometimes. You know, don't you, that the pansies you love so much, Prue, are one kind of violet, cultivated until they are large and fine?"

"Why, no, are they violets? Are my pansies violets?"

"Yes, they are what is called the heartsease violets. They were a very small flower at first, and not so brightly colored. They will become small again if you let them run wild a year or two."

Prue was looking at the variegated violet in her hand.

"I should think there's a story about this," she said, nodding her busy, imaginative little head.

"Suppose you tell it to us, Prue," said the Chief Gardener.

"Well, I think it's this way," said Prue. "Once upon a time there was a little girl named Bessie. And she lived way off--way over by Crescent Lake--with an old witch-woman who was poor. And Bessie had to carry milk to sell, every day, because they had a cow, and Bessie couldn't drink the milk, because they had to sell it.

"And one day when Bessie was going with the milk through the woods, she stopped to pick some flowers, because she liked flowers, all kinds, and specially violets. And when she stooped over to pick the violets, a little of her milk spilled out of her pail, and it went on the violets, right on the blue flowers. And when Bessie saw them all spattered with the milk she says, 'Oh, how funny you look! I wish you'd stay that way all the time.' And there was a fairy heard her say that, and she liked Bessie because she was so good, so she made the violets stay just that way with the white spots on them, and Bessie went home, and one day when the old witch-woman died the fairy brought a prince on a white horse, and Bessie went away with him to be a princess, in a palace covered with gold and silver, and lived happy ever after."

The Chief Gardener looked down at the little girl beside him.

"Why, what an exciting story! Did you make it all just now?"

"Yes, just now. It just came of itself," said little Prue.

"And didn't Bessie want her violets?" asked Davy.

"She took some of them along with her in a basket, and planted them around her new palace."

"And the rest she left for us," said the Chief Gardener. "I know now what to call them. We shall call them Bessie's Violets."

JUNE

JUNE

THEN THEY WENT DOWN INTO THE STRAWBERRY PATCH

JUNE, the month of roses, and strawberries. The beautiful month when spring is just turning to summer, and summer is giving us her first rare gifts.

In Davy's garden the corn was up, and had grown more in two weeks than the corn planted in the house had grown in four. It was the long sunny days that did this, and the showers that seemed to come almost too often, but perhaps the gardens didn't think so, for they grew, and the weeds grew, too, and kept Prue and Davy busy pulling and hoeing and cultivating.

Davy's radishes were big enough to eat just a month from the day they were planted--think of it!--when those planted in the house had taken ever and ever so long. Prue's pansies and sweet-pease, and her other three "sweets" were all up, too, and so green and flourishing.

But perhaps the thing that made them both happiest, at this season, was the Chief Gardener's strawberry-patch. Either that or big Prue's roses--they were not sure which.