Part 16

"They wants pricking out, that's why they're so spindle-shankey. 'Tain't no good asking me for more boxes, I ain't got no more; and you can't put 'em out in the open neither--leastways, they'll die if you do."

"Of course not," I said with all the knowledge I possessed in my tone. "But we must have boxes. They can be knocked up, can't they?"

"Not without wood, they can't. And just look at all them seeds wot you've sowed. Why, they wants a sight o' boxes now."

It was a dilemma, but Jim revived my faint spirits.

There were boxes--old winecases--in the cellar, he said. Jim knew every nook and cranny of the house; he would just ferret them out; no one would miss them. Jim never asked leave, for experience had taught him that a demand occasions a curious rise in the value of an article absolutely unknown to the possessor before it was required by someone else. And Griggs knocked them together, for Jim explained we had to let the fellow try his hand occasionally.

We filled the new boxes with a little heavier diet than the baby seeds had enjoyed, good mould from under some shrubbery, and then carefully separated each stem; and carrying out Nature's law of the survival of the fittest, I placed the most promising in the new environment.

I had done one whole box, it looked so neat, the little upright shoots all about three inches apart, when Jim and the Young Man came round.

He had been away for a few days and was quite anxious to know how my garden grew.

He had altered the old rhyme with which, of course, his Reverence and the Others were always pestering me; but I don't think his version was very original either--

"How does the garden so contrairy Get on with its new Mistress Mary?"

I was seated on the corner of the one frame and the boxes were precariously placed on the edge.

The Young Man's face beamed. "I have been learning to prick out; now, let me see."

And to my horror he began to pull up my neat little plants.

"There, that's wrong, and that and that. No, that stands; but see, all these are wrong."

I gasped, "What are you doing? Do you call that pricking out? I don't."

"By Jove! you'll catch it now, my dear fellow," said Jim.

"Oh! don't you see it's all right to do that, because it shows you you have done them all wrong."

"I think you have misunderstood the idea of 'pricking out,'" I said coldly.

The Young Man was so full of information he paid no attention to my offended dignity or Jim's mirth.

"I learnt it on purpose to show you. I planted a box full at home and the gardener came round and did that to my plants. I nearly whacked him on the head."

"You're a parson," interrupted Jim, "you've got to think of that."

"I know, Jim. I managed to bottle my feelings nearly as well as Mistress Mary did just now. I know what she is feeling."

But I was still dignified.

"Now will you tell me," I began.

"Oh, it's a first-rate dodge! You see, if they are firmly put in they will stand that little pull, and if not it shows you ought to have wedged them in better."

"Why," said Jim, "I bet I could tug out any you could wedge in."

"That's the art; you must wedge right and tug just enough."

"And why," I asked again, "why this tugging and this wedging?"