that of the Indies in the degree heat _it is better to raise from slips
and layers than to try to sow seed which is a great time coming up_."

The book quite frankly disclosed the terrors as well as the joys of
the game. It was most disconcerting to read of

"The Distempers and Insects that Attack....The great Enemies are
Rabbets, Garden Mise, Moles, Caterpillars, Maybugs, Ants, Snails,
Turks, Canthardies and an abundance of weeds, the names of which are
unknown to us--"

She shouted with youthful laughter as she read it, the echoes of her
merriment sounding through the empty halls. She doubled her little
fist and shook it toward the candle, flickering low in its socket.

"That's what has hidden the garden," she murmured, "that's why I can't
see it--" she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "--Abundance-of-weeds--
Piqueur and Bele will settle you!"

All through the verdant spring, all through the quick hot summer the
girl puzzled over the unanswered riddle--the scheme of the garden.
Piqueur and Bele and Margot toiled valiantly pulling up the myriad
abundance-of-weeds, but in vain. It was not until the resplendent
autumn had passed that she had any inkling of the real pattern. There
came a glorious moonlit night, a chilly night when she snuggled under
the blankets and yawned over the chapter that told her "how to mulch
plants for winter." The wind blew so chill that at midnight she
pattered across the old carpet to make the casement fast. The whole
cleared space below her glistened with the fairy glamour of the first
frost. Under the magic silvery whiteness the lost "parterres and