might
know a radish next time. The little leaves, no bigger than half your
little-finger nail, grew in twos,--two on each tiny stem; they were
almost round.

Margery flew back to her mother, to say that the first seeds were up.
And her mother, nearly as excited as Margery, came to look at the little
crack.

Each day, after that, the row of radishes grew, till, in a week, it
stood as high as your finger, green and sturdy. But about the third day,
while Margery was stooping over the radishes, she saw something very,
very small and green, peeping above ground, where the lettuce was
planted. Could it be weeds? No, for on looking very closely she saw that
the wee leaves faintly marked a regular row. They did not make a crack,
like the radishes; they seemed too small and too far apart to push the
earth up like that. Margery leaned down and looked with all her eyes at
the baby plants. The tiny leaves grew two on a stem, and were almost
round. The more she looked at them the more it seemed to Margery that
they looked exactly as the radish looked when it first came up. "Do you
suppose," Margery said to herself, "that lettuce and radish look alike
while they are growing? They don't look alike when they are on the
table!"

Day by day the lettuce grew, and soon the little round leaves were
easier to examine; they certainly were very much like radish leaves.

Then, one morning, while she was searching for signs of other seeds,
Margery discovered the beets. In irregular patches on the row, hints of
green were coming. The next day and the next they grew, until the beet
leaves were big enough to see.

Margery looked. Then she looked again. Then she wrinkled her forehead.
"Can we have made a mistake?" she thought. "Do you suppose we can have
planted _all_ radishes?"

For those little beet leaves were almost round, and they grew two on a
stem, precisely like the lettuce and the radish; except for the size,
all three rows looked alike.

It was too much for Margery. She ran to the house and found her father.
Her little face was so anxious that he thought something unpleasant had
happened. "Papa," she said, all out of breath, "do you think we could
have made a mistake about my garden? Do you think we could have put
radishes in all the rows?"

Father laughed. "What makes you think such a thing?" he asked.

"Papa," said Margery, "the little leaves all look exactly alike! every
plant has just two tiny leaves on it, and shaped the