orgot to ask for the cucumber prize.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Mab.

"I'm going to take you and Hal down to the garden and show you how to set
out cabbage plants," said Daddy Blake.

"But we've got some cabbage plants!" cried Hal.

"Yes, I know. But these are a kind that will get a head, or be riper,
later in the Fall. This is Winter cabbage that we will keep down cellar,
and have to eat when there is snow on the ground, for cabbage is very good
and healthful. We can eat it raw, or made into sauer-kraut or have it
boiled with potatoes. We must save some cabbage for Winter and that is the
kind I am going to plant now."

"And may we help?" asked Mab.

"Yes, come on to the garden."

Daddy Blake had asked Uncle Pennywait, that day, to smooth off a plowed
and harrowed place ready for the cabbage plants to be put in that evening,
and the long rows, dug in the brown soil, were now waiting.

"Where did you get the cabbage plants?" Mab wanted to know. "Did you grow
them in a little box down at your office, Daddy, as we did the tomatoes
here?"

"No, Mab, not quite that way, though I might have done that if I had had
room. I bought these cabbage plants in the market on my way home. Some
farmers, with lots of ground, plant the cabbage seed early in the spring
in what are called 'hot-frames.' That is they are like our tomato boxes
only larger, and they are kept out of doors. But over the top are glass
windows, so the cold air can not get in. But the warm sun shines through
the glass as it did through our tomato box, and soon the cabbage seeds
begin to sprout.

"Then the plants grow larger and larger, until they are strong enough to
be set out, as the tomatoes were. In this way you can grow the vegetables
better than if you waited until it was warm enough to put the seed right
out in the garden, and let the plants grow up there from the beginning.
Putting the seeds in the hot frame gives them a good start. Now we'll set
out the cabbage plants, and you may both help."

Daddy Blake gave Hal and Mab each a small handful of the little cabbage
plants, some of which had two and others three light green leaves on.
There were also small roofs, with a little wet dirt clinging to them, from
where they had been pulled out of their early home in which they first
grew.

"Oh, Hal! That isn't the way to do it!" cried Daddy Blake, when he had
watched his little boy walking along the cabbage row for a while, dropping
the p