Читать книгу Cot and Cradle Stories - Catharine Parr Traill - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe Five Little Gardeners.
Agnes and Sara, Jane and Katie, and little Susie came to their father one day and asked for a piece of ground that was just outside the garden wall. It was a bit of waste land only a few feet wide, but they all wanted to have gardens of their own, because, they said, "the gardener was very cross to them when they plucked flowers out of the garden borders or made litters on the walks," and so they would like to plant flowers for themselves.
Their father, who was always kind, and wished to see the little ones happy, granted the request. He gave directions to the gardener to dig, rake smooth, and divide the piece of land into so many beds with a path between them, so that the five little gardeners need not interfere with each other, each having her own, and to give them such flower seeds and roots as they asked for: but they were not to help themselves or meddle with his borders.
The children were very well satisfied with this arrangement, and they all agreed to be good and not vex the old gardener.
Agnes, the eldest of the children, was about ten years old. She set to work diligently, and this was how she laid out her garden:
She first strewed the dividing path which lay between her plot and Sara's with white sand from a heap in the yard. This was a good plan, as it kept the path neat and nice if it rained ever so hard. Then she got Peter the gardener to give her a bit of cord. The ends of the cord she tied fast to two sticks, one of which she stuck upright in the centre of the bed, and with the other drew a circle about four feet across. Then she drew four straight lines from the centre of the circle to the outer edge: thus dividing the round bed into four equal parts. Another large circle beyond the first, with a path between, gave her four corner beds of equal size, as the whole plot was a square.
Agnes had used her garden-line and sticks much in the way she had seen her father strike circles with his compasses, fixing one leg of the compass in the paper and using the other, which held the pencil, to mark the exact figure on the paper; the end of her stick made the same mark in the soft earth.
In the very centre of the round, Agnes planted a lovely pink rose. The gardener brought it himself and put it in for her, he was so pleased with the neat way in which she had laid out her garden ground. A border of double daisies, red, white and pink, were next planted round the outer edge. In one quartering she planted pansies of many colours, and in another phlox; in the third, the blue nemophila, and in the fourth were portulaca of all colours. Thus the middle bed was filled with very pretty flowers, though as yet they were not in bloom. In the corner beds she had other flowers planted, but I cannot remember their names, only that later in the summer there were China asters and some geraniums. Agnes was a sensible girl, you see; she waited with patience for the blooming of many of the plants she put into the ground.
Sara's garden was next to her sister Agnes's, and Sara said: "Mine is to be a useful garden, not all for show."
She laid out her bit of ground in straight beds, and planted the sweet and fragrant lemon-thyme in one bed, sweet marjoram in another, curled parsley in a third, and summer savory in a fourth; then she had a sage bush or two and a bush of sweet lavender, and a row of wallflowers and stalks set back against the brick wall.
This was Sara's garden, and the old gardener laughed and said: "Well, Miss Sara, you'll make a rare good housewife for some good-husband one of these days." Then he brought her a root of peppermint and a bit of bergamot, and said: "Now, Miss, you have the sweetest garden in the place."
Jane's garden. Well, Jane was six years old, and she thought she would have something very nice for her garden; so she planted two currant bushes with the green fruit on them in the middle, then a big peony and a hollyhock, and some cowslips and primroses, and the rest of the bed she filled in with wild strawberries and a lot of other things, wherever there was room for anything. She would not take pattern by Agnes's or Sara's gardens, but liked to do things as she chose herself.
Katie's garden. Katie was only four years old, and she was not very wise, as you will find when you hear how she made her garden. She began by making a puddle with water from the pump, then she brought a lap-full of daisies and buttercups from the meadows, and stuck the flowers in rows over the soft ground. Katie thought it looked very pretty and ran to call her father to see what a lovely flower garden she had made. But her father only laughed and said: "Katie, your flowers have no roots: they will all be faded to-morrow."
Katie would not believe this, but when the sun came out next day, by noon all the flowers drooped and hung their heads, so she pulled them up and got fresh ones: but they faded, too, and day after day it was always the same. Then she said: "I will sow seeds as Peter does."
Katie went to the cook and said: "Please, Anne, I want you to give me some rice, and some pearl barley, and some coffee."
Anne thought she wanted these things to play with, so gave them without asking any questions. Katie ran away to her garden, and making some lines in the soil with a stick, planted the rice and barley and the few coffee-beans. When she told Jane what a fine thing she had done in planting the things Anne had given her, Jane made great fun of her, and Agnes and Sara, too, laughed at the wee Katie's garden. This made the child very angry, and she said she would not do anything more to her garden; so it grew only weeds till Agnes took pity on it, cleaned it up, and sowed mustard and cress and radish seeds, which came up quickly, and then Katie was very happy.
Susie, the youngest, must have her garden, too, as well as her sisters, but she was a very, odd child, and you shall hear what she did with the piece of ground next to Katie's against the, brick wall. She got an old trowel from the garden-house, and set to work to dig a great hole in the ground. When she was tired and hot, Katie came and took a turn at the digging, and helped her to carry away the earth and make a heap with it farther off. The two little folks agreed to plant two ripe cherries in the hill they had made, and they said: "We shall have two big cherry-trees next year, with plenty of nice red cherries to eat for ourselves;" and then they went to work again digging at the hole in the ground, making it bigger and deeper.
"What are you making that hole for, children?" asked their father as he watched them at work.
"We are digging to find a treasure," said Susie.
"What sort of treasure do you expect to get out of that hole?"
"Gold and silver and beautiful things," replied Susie.
"But gold and silver do not grow in places like your garden, Susie."
"You said they came out of the earth, deep, deep down, and we are going to dig till we find them," was Susie's decided answer as she went on digging. But Susie never found the treasure she worked so hard for that day, so many years ago. But in the years that followed she found a better treasure than either gold or silver or precious stones—treasures which never rust nor decay, which the Lord our God will give to those little ones who love Him and their blessed Saviour.
EDITOR'S NOTE.
For older readers a knowledge of the future of the five little gardeners may add interest to the foregoing story.
Agnes revealed her character in the methodical plan of her garden. Authoress of the Royal biographies, many poems, historical tales and several novels, she accomplished an enormous amount of work, writing her "Lives of the Queens of Scotland" only a few chapters ahead of the printers, while at the same time she was fulfilling numerous social engagements, keeping up a large private correspondence, and accomplishing some of the finest and most laborious fancy work. Her systematic way of arranging her time enabled her to do much more and better work than she otherwise could have done.
The old gardener's prophecy as to Sara's future was a true one. Of the five sisters she was the only one who never wrote. She was the housekeeper of the family, and married the vicar of a large parish in the north of England, a rich man, who entertained a great deal—both his friends and the poor of his parish—and Sara was indeed "a rare good housewife to a good husband."
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Jane's garden, was also in a curious way an index of her life. She wrote many things on many subjects, her gamut ranging all the way from witty squibs to erudite histories and religious tracts. Her store of knowledge, apparently inexhaustible, was yet a kaleidoscopic collection of valuable material. Her love of colour was without artistic arrangement, but grand in its almost barbaric defiance of the rules of art.
Of Katie's garden we can truly say, that in her choice of the buttercups and daisies of the home meadows, she foreshadowed her love for the wild-flowers and ferns, and the valuable work she has done in bringing our Canadian flora to the knowledge of the world. All through life she has gathered gifts of her Heavenly Father day by day, and when the hot noonday sun of sorrow faded them, she has but turned again to the garden of her trust to replace them. She has owed much to the kindly help and sympathy of others, and has been ever as grateful as she was to Agnes when she sowed the useful mustard and cress in the garden under the wall.
Susie, who was possessed of the greatest of all gifts, the priceless gift true genius, was ever questioning the reason of things, ever digging deep into the well of the knowledge of life, ever seeking for the treasure of truth, and finding it in increasing beauty and wealth in the Book of Life. Generous, enthusiastic, a brilliant conversationalist, a true poet, and a graphic writer, Canadian literature owes much to her influence and her pen.
