THE POTATOES' EYES
Hal and Mab ran after their father as he hurried out into the yard. They
could hear Sammie crying more loudly now, and above his voice sounded a
growling and barking noise.
One part of the fence, between the Blake yard and that where Mr. Porter
had made his garden, was low, so that the two children could look over.
They saw Sammie standing near the fence, greatly frightened, and looking
at a tangle of morning glory vines in which something was wiggling around
and making a great fuss.
"Oh, what is it?" asked Hal.
"It's a--it's a lion!" cried the frightened Sammie. "A great--great big
lion, all fuzzy like!"
"Oh, it couldn't be a lion, Sammie," said Mr. Blake. "Tell me what it is
that scared you."
"'Tis a lion," said Sammie again. "He ran after me an' I ran an' he ran in
the bushes an' he's there now. He barked at me!"
"Ho! If he barked it's a DOG," cried Hal. "Where is he, Sammie?"
"In there," and Sammie pointed to the tangle of morning glory vines. Just
then Mab saw something that made her call out:
"Why it is a dog. It's OUR dog--Roly-Poly!"
"Are you sure?" asked her father. "Roly is over at Mr. Thompson's house
you know," for the little poodle had been sent away while the garden was
being made. Mr. Thompson had planted nothing, having too small a yard.
"I don't care!" exclaimed Mab. "I DID see Roly. He's in the bushes
there--under the morning glories."
"Well, if it's your dog Roly I would not be so frightened of HIM," said
Sammie. "Only I thinked he was a LION."
"Here, Roly! Roly-Poly, come on out!" cried Hal, and out came a very
queer-looking dog indeed. It was Roly, but how he had changed. He was all
stuck over with leaves, grass and bits of bark from the trees. He
certainly did "fuzzy," as Sammie had said, and not at all like the nice,
clean poodle he had been.
"Oh, whatever is the matter with him?" cried Mab.
"He's got a lot of leaves stuck on him," added Hal. "Come here, Roly, and
I'll pull 'em off for you."
Roly came running over to Hal, but when the little boy tried to get the
leaves, grass and bits of bark off his pet he found out what was the
matter.
"Roly's all stuck up in fly paper!" cried Hal. "Look!"
"In fly paper?" asked Mr. Blake. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, he must have sat down in some fly paper, and it stuck to him all
over, and then he rolled in the leaves and grass," answered Hal.
"And then the leaves and grass stuck to the fly paper," added Mab. "Oh,
you poor Roly-Poly!"
The little poodle dog must have known how he looked, and he must have felt
quite badly, for he just stretched out at the feet of Hal, who had jumped
over the fence, and he howled and howled and howled, Roly-Poly did.
"I wonder how it happened?" asked Mr. Blake. "But we must take Roly-Poly
in the house and wash him. Then he'll feel better and look better. Did he
scare you very much, Sammie?"
"A--a little bit. When I saw him in our yard, all fuzzy like, I thought
sure he was a lion."
Mrs. Porter came out, having heard her little boy crying, and when she saw
Roly-Poly she laughed.
Then she said:
"You poor dog. Come over and I'll squirt the hose on you. That will take
off some of the fly paper."
"Oh, let me squirt it!" cried Hal. "Roly loves to be squirted on! Let me
do it!"
"I'm going to help," added Mab.
"An' me, too!" called Sammie.
"They'll drown the poor dog," spoke Mr. Blake, laughing. "I guess I'd
better take a hand in this myself."
"What's the matter?" asked Aunt Lolly from the back steps. "Is the house
on fire?" She was always afraid that would happen.
"No, it's just Roly-Poly and some sticky fly paper," answered Mr. Blake.
"He must have run home to get a bath after he got all tangled up in the
sticky stuff at the Thompson house."
By using the hose, and by greasing the fly paper, which really loosened it
more than water did, and then by using soap suds and a brush, Roly-Poly
was finally cleaned. Then on their way to school Hal and Mab stopped at
the Thompson home to find out what had happened.
"Roly-Poly was very good, all the while he was here," said Mrs. Thompson,
"though at first he was lonesome for you. He would have run back to your
house if I had let him out, but I knew he might make trouble in your
garden so I kept him here.
"This morning I put some of the sticky fly paper around the house and left
a window open in the room where Roly was sleeping. The wind must have
blown the sticky paper on his curly coat of hair and this so frightened
him that he jumped out of the window and ran back home to you."
"Only he went in the yard next door, instead of in ours," said Mab, "and
he hid under the morning glory vines."
"And on his way," added Hal, "he rolled in dried leaves and grass until he
was all covered, and he looked twice as big as he is now."
"And Sammie thought he was a lion," went on Mab.
"Are you going to bring Roly-Poly back to me to keep?" asked Mrs.
Thompson.
"Thank you, no," answered Hal. "Daddy says our garden is growing so well
now that Roly can't do much harm. Besides we're going to teach him he
mustn't dig holes, to hide his bones, in places where we have things
planted. So we'll keep Roly now."
"And we're much obliged to you for being so nice to him," added Mab, "and
we're sorry he spoiled your fly paper."
"Oh, I have plenty more fly paper," laughed Mrs. Thompson. "I'm only sorry
poor Roly was so stuck up. Good-bye!"
Hal and Mab hurried on to school, laughing over what had happened to their
pet poodle. When their lessons were done they went back to their garden,
anxious to see if Roly had been good, and had not dug up any corn or
beans.
"Everything is all right," said Mab, as she looked at her bush beans,
which were now in blossom. Soon the blossoms would drop off and in their
places would come tiny bean pods.
"Oh, see Uncle Pennyweight!" cried Mab, when she had found that Roly was
peacefully sleeping on the shady porch. "What's he doing?"
"Planting something, I guess," replied Hal after he had looked at his
growing corn, and hoed around a few hills.
"And Aunt Lolly is working in her part of the garden," went on Mab. "I
wonder if they'll win that ten dollar gold piece prize, Hal?"
"I hope one of us wins it, Mab. If I win I'll give you half."
"And I'll give you half if I win, 'cause you helped me hoe my beans one
day when there was so many weeds in 'em."
Daddy Blake had put the ten dollar gold piece in a little box on the
dining room mantle, and every day Hal or Mab looked to make sure the prize
was there.
"What you doin' Uncle Pennywait?" asked Mab as she and her brother went
over to the vacant lot next door, where part of the Blake garden had been
planted.
"I'm taking the eyes out of the potatoes," answered Uncle Pennywait.
"Eyes out of potatoes!" cried Hal. "I didn't know they had any."
"Of course they have!" laughed his uncle. "Else how could they see to get
out of their brown skin-jackets when they want to go swimming in the
kettle of hot water?"
"Oh, he's only fooling us; isn't he Aunt Lolly?" asked Hal. His aunt was
hoeing some weeds away from between the hills of cucumbers she had
planted, for she was going to raise some of them, as well as pumpkins,
which last had been planted in between the rows of Hal's corn.
"Well, Uncle Pennywait may be fooling you a little," said Aunt Lolly, "but
I did see him cutting some eyes from the potatoes."
Hal and Mab looked at one another. They did not know what to think now. It
was seldom that both Aunt Lolly and Uncle Pennywait joked at the same
time.
"Come over here and I'll show you," called Uncle Pennywait when he had
laughed at the funny looks on the faces of the two children. "See," he
went on, "these are the 'eyes' of the potato, though the right name, of
course, is seeds."
He pointed to the little spots you may see on any potato you pick up,
unless it is one to small to have them. The spots are near the ends and in
the middle, and they look like little dimples. Some of them may look very
much like eyes, and that is what most gardeners and farmers call them, but
they are really the potato's seeds.
Mab and Hal watched what Uncle Pennywait was doing. He had a basket in
which were some large potatoes and these he was cutting into chunks,
letting them fall into another basket. In each chunk their uncle cut the
children noticed several "eyes."
"What are you doing?" asked Hal.
"I am getting ready to plant a second crop of potatoes," said Uncle
Pennywait. "The first ones I planted in my garden were early ones. Soon we
will be eating them on the table. They are not the kind that will keep
well all winter, and I am planting that kind now. I am going to win the
ten dollar prize by raising a bigger crop of potatoes than you can raise
of corn or beans, little ones," and he smiled at Hal and Mab.
Then he went on cutting the eyes out of the potatoes, while the children
watched him. They saw that each potato chunk had in it two or three of the
queer dimple-spots.
"A potato is not like other things that grow in the garden," said Uncle
Pennywait. "It does not have its seeds separate from it, as beans have
theirs in a pod, or as corn has its kernels or seeds on a cob, or a
pumpkin or apple has seeds inside it. A potato's seeds are part of itself,
buried in the white part that we cook for the table, and each potato has
in it many seeds or eyes.
"Of course I could plant whole potatoes, one in each hill, but that would
be wasting seed, so I cut the potatoes up into chunks and plant the little
chunks, each one with two or more seeds in it."
"And do you only plant one chunk?" asked Mab.
"No, I drop in two or three, according to the size and the number of eyes.
This is done so that if one set of seeds doesn't grow the other will. Now
you watch me."
Uncle Pennywait had smoothed off a nice bit of his garden where, as yet,
he had planted nothing, and into the long earth-rows of this he now began
to plant his potato seed. He walked along the rows with a bag of the
cut-up pieces hung around his neck, and as he dropped in the white chunks
he covered them with dirt by using a hoe.
"When my potatoes grow up into nice green vines, and the striped bugs come
to have a feast on them, you may help me drive the bad creatures away,"
said Uncle Pennywait to the children. "In fact some of my early potatoes
need looking after now."
"Are there bugs on them?" asked Mab, when her uncle had finished his
planting.
"Indeed there are! Come and I'll show you."
Over they went to the early-potato part of Uncle Pennywait's garden.
There, on many of the green vines, were a lot of blackish and yellowish
bugs, crawling and eating the leaves.
"We'll just give them a dinner of Paris Green," said Uncle Pennywait, "and
they won't eat any more of my vines."
"What's Paris Green?" asked Mab.
"It is a deadly poison, for grown folks or children as well as bugs, and
you must never touch it, or handle it, unless I am with you, or your
father is near," said Uncle Pennywait. "Here is some of it."
He showed the children a bright, green powder, some of which he stirred
into a sprinkling pot full of water. This water he sprayed over the potato
vines.
"The poison in the water goes on the potato leaves," explained Uncle
Pennywait, "and when the bugs eat the leaves they also eat the poison, and
die. We have to kill them or they would eat away the leaves of the vines
until they all died, and we would have no potatoes. The potato bugs are
very harmful, and we must get rid of them."
Then he let Hal and Mab sprinkle the potato vines with the Paris Green,
afterward making the children carefully wash their hands so there would be
no danger.
"Is that the only way to drive away the potato bugs?" asked Hal.
"Sometimes farmers go through their potato field and knock the bugs from
the vines into a can full of kerosene oil," said Uncle Pennywait, "or they
may use another poison instead of Paris Green. But the bugs must be killed
if we are to have potatoes."
Just then Mab saw Aunt Lolly going into her garden with a bottle in her
hand.
"Are you going to poison bugs too?" asked the little girl.
"No, I am going to make a cucumber grow inside this," was the answer.
"Make a cucumber grow in a bottle?" exclaimed Hal. "Why, how funny!"
"Let's go see!" cried Mab, and together they ran over to Aunt Lolly's
garden.