“Oh, yes, I’ve seen them,” said Ben; “but they taste like our onion, do they not?”
“They are stronger,” said the Scotchman. “In the old countries, especially in Spain, garlic is used in almost every dish. It is very easy to cultivate, as it is a very hardy plant. The doctors give preparations of this plant for various diseases, and the juice makes a strong cement for broken glass or china. Even its bad odor is useful; for it drives away snails and worms and moles, and other voracious creatures, if placed near their haunts.”
“I suppose onions are very nice,” said little Sally; “but it makes my eyes ache to stand so near this bed. I am going to play with Jack for a while now. You and Ben can pull the vegetables, if you like.”
“We shall have a resting-spell, after a while,” said Gill. “The potatoes are all in the bin, and I have only the pumpkins to get in; and then no more jogging to the the city, day after day, for a long time to come.”
“What will you do all winter?” asked Ben.
“I shall find work as the hours come, if it please God to spare my life,” said Gill. “I’ve never yet seen the time when there was nothing to occupy me. Even the ground, that seems to lie idle during the frost and cold, is secretly making ready for the spring, and I shall be as busy as it, with bulbs and plants and seeds, and plans for their future growth. I have to look to it that they do not sprout too soon in the cellar, and that they are in a proper state of dryness or moisture; and I must enrich the land, and arrange so that the crops shall not exhaust it. Never fear. I shall have enough to do without going every day to market in the old cart.”
|THE Reed family were at breakfast. Lucy had peeled some potatoes, and baked them brown in the oven, and they were very delicious, the children thought,--so much better than with the skins on.
“Gill dug the potatoes while I was sick,” said Sally. “I am sorry, for we lost our lesson.”
“Maybe papa will tell us about them,” said Ben:
“I think you must know nearly as much as I do about this common vegetable,” said Mr. Reed. “Did you not help to plant it?”
Sally recollected that she and her mother were with Gill when he put the tubers into the hills, and that he told her how each little “eye” in the potato was a germ of life, and would sprout, and send up a new plant to spread out its green leaves, and display its purple and white blossoms and its little clusters of green seed balls, as big as some of Ben’s marbles. She and Ben went down cellar when they had finished their meal, to see the different varieties. The “early rose” and the “mercer” and the “pink-eyes” and the “blue-noses” and the “ladies’ fingers.”