inches or a foot
deep; and I would plant vegetables."

"Do you mane we are to grow cabbages here, Teddy?" Captain
O'Halloran asked, with a burst of laughter.

"No, I wouldn't grow cabbages. I would just grow mustard, and
cress, and radishes. If you eat plenty of them, they will keep off
scurvy; and all you don't want for yourselves, I will guarantee you
will be able to sell at any price you like to ask for them and, if
nobody else will buy them, the hospitals will. They would be the
saving of many a man's life."

"But they would want watering," Captain O'Halloran said, more
seriously, for he saw how much the doctor was in earnest.

"They will that. You will have no difficulty in hiring a man to
bring up water, and to tend to them and to look after the fowls.
Men will be glad enough to work for next to nothing.

"I tell you, Gerald, if I wasn't in the service, I should hire
every bit of land I could lay hands on, and employ as many
labourers as it required; and I should look to be a rich man,
before the end of the siege. I was speaking to the chief surgeon
today about it; and he is going to put the convalescents to work,
on a bit of spare ground there is at the back of the hospital, and
to plant vegetables.

"I was asking down the town yesterday and I found that, at Blount's
store, you can get as much vegetable seed as you like. You lay in a
stock, today, of mustard and cress and radish. Don't be afraid of
the expense--get twenty pounds of each of them. You will be always
able to sell what you don't want, at ten times the price you give
for it now. If you can get a piece more garden ground, take it at
any price and raise other vegetables; but keep the top of the house
here for what I tell you.

"Well, I said nine inches deep of earth; that is more than
necessary. Four and a half will do for the radishes, and two is
enough for the mustard and cress. That will grow on a blanket--it
is really only water that it wants."

"What do you think, Carrie?" Captain O'Halloran asked.

"Well, Gerald, if you really believe the siege is going to last
like that, I should think that it would be really worth while to do
what Teddy Burke advises. Of course, you will be too busy to look
after things, but Bob might do so."

"Of course I would," Bob broke in. "It will give me something to
do."

"Well, we will set about it at once, then. I will speak to the man
downstairs. You know he has got two or three horses and traps down