grow.
She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and
knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made
nice little clear places around them.

"Now they look as if they could breathe," she said, after she had
finished with the first ones. "I am going to do ever so many more. I'll
do all I can see. If I haven't time to-day I can come to-morrow."

She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so
immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under
the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat
off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to
the grass and the pale green points all the time.

The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see
gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben
Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to
eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature
who was not half Ben's size and yet had had the sense to come into his
garden and begin at once.

Mistress Mary worked in her garden until it was time to go to her midday
dinner. In fact, she was rather late in remembering, and when she put on
her coat and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope, she could not believe
that she had been working two or three hours. She had been actually
happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points
were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had
looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them.

"I shall come back this afternoon," she said, looking all round at her
new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they
heard her.

Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed open the slow old door and
slipped through it under the ivy. She had such red cheeks and such
bright eyes and ate such a dinner that Martha was delighted.

"Two pieces o' meat an' two helps o' rice puddin'!" she said. "Eh!
mother will be pleased when I tell her what th' skippin'-rope's done
for thee."

In the course of her digging with her pointed stick Mistress Mary had
found herself digging up a sort of white root rather like an onion. She
had put it back in its place and patted the earth carefully down on it
and just now she wondered if Martha could tell her what it was.

"Martha," she said, "what are those white roots that look like onions?"

"