Father set her down in the garage and handed her the package and then
hurried off into the house.

She tried to pull the strings off but they wouldn't pull; there seemed to
be a bunch of the wrapping paper at one end and a hump inside the parcel at
the other. So she decided to run in for mother's scissors.

But just as she got to the back steps, she met father coming out--it hadn't
taken him long to get into old clothes, that was certain.

"Never mind about the scissors, Blunderbuss," said he laughingly, using a
name he sometimes called her, "I'll take my knife."

Just three slashes of the sharp knife and the strings were off. Mary Jane
opened the paper with shaking fingers, she was that excited. And what do
you suppose she found?

A garden set--a spade and a hoe and a rake all just the right size for a
little girl to work with and so pretty and clean and new that Mary Jane
knew that they had been purchased on purpose for her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands and dancing around, "it's a garden!
I know the secret now! It's a garden! That's what mother was trying to make
me guess and I never thought! May I have one all my very ownest own?"

"That's the secret," admitted Mr. Merrill, "and the garden is for you
only--just as long as you take care of it. Now you take your tools and I'll
take mine and we'll see where this garden is to be."

They paraded out of the garage and over to where the last summer's garden