CHAPTER IV

MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOW


"I hope you feel easy in your mind, child, now you've put this whole
garden to bed and tucked 'em under cover, heads and all," said Uncle
Tucker, as he spread the last bit of old sacking down over the end of
the row of little sprouting bean vines. "When I look at the garden I'm
half skeered to go in the house to bed for fear I haven't got a quilt
to my joints."

"Now, honey sweet, you know better than that," answered Rose Mary as
she rose from weighting down the end of a frilled white petticoat with
a huge clod of earth and stretched it so as to cover quite two yards
of the green shoots. "I haven't taken a thing of yours but two shirts
and one of your last summer seersucker coats. I'm going to mend the
split up the back in it for the wash Monday. Aunt Amandy lent me two
aprons and a sack and a petticoat for the peony bushes, and Aunt Viney
gave me this shawl and three chemises that cover all the pinks. I've
taken all the tablecloths for the early peas, and Stonie's shirts,
each one of them, have covered a whole lot of the poet's narcissus.
All the rest of the things are my own clothes, and I've still got a
clean dress for to-morrow. If I can just cover everything to-night, I
won't be afraid of the frost any more. You don't want all the lovely
little green things to die, do you, and not have any snaps or peas or
peonies at all?"

"Oh, fly-away!" answered Uncle Tucker as he tucked in the last end of