"If each is as small as those I saw under the microscope there must be billions in me!" and Ethel Blue stretched her arms to their widest extent and threw her head upwards as far as her neck would allow.

"I guess there are, young woman," and Helen went off to hang her snowy coat where it would dry before she put it in the closet.

"There'th a thnow flake that lookth like a plant!" cried Dicky who had slipped open the window wide enough to capture an especially large feather.

"It really does!" exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was nearest to her little cousin and caught a glimpse of the picture through the glass before the snow melted.

"Did it have 'root, stem and leaves'?" asked Dorothy. "That's what I always was taught made a plant—root, stem and leaves. Would Helen call a cell that you couldn't see a plant?"

"Yes," came a faint answer from the hall. "If it's living and isn't an animal it's a vegetable—though way down in the lower forms it's next to impossible to tell one from the other. There isn't any rule that doesn't have an exception."

"I should think the biggest difference would be that animals eat plants and plants eat—what do plants eat?" ended Dorothy lamely.

"That is the biggest difference," assented Helen. "Plants are fed by water and mineral substances that come from the soil directly, while animals get the mineral stuff by way of the plants."

"Father told us once about some plants that caught insects. They eat animals."

"And there are animals that eat both vegetables and animals, you and I, for instance. So you can't draw any sharp lines."

"When a plant gets out of the cell stage and has a 'root, stem and leaves' then you know it's a plant if you don't before," insisted Dorothy, determined to make her knowledge useful.

"Did any of you notice the bean I've been sprouting in my room?" asked Helen.

"I'll get it, I'll get it!" shouted Dicky.

"Trust Dicky not to let anything escape his notice!" laughed his big sister.

Dicky returned in a minute or two carrying very carefully a shallow earthenware dish from which some thick yellow-green tips were sprouting.

"I soaked some peas and beans last week," explained Helen, "and when they were tender I planted them. You see they're poking up their heads now."

"They don't look like real leaves," commented Ethel Blue.

"This first pair is really the two halves of the bean. They hold the food for the little plant. They're so fat and pudgy that they never do look like real leaves. In other plants where there isn't so much food they become quite like their later brothers."

"Isn't it queer that whatever makes the plant grow knows enough to send the leaves up and the roots down," said Dorothy thoughtfully.

"That's the way the life principle works," agreed Helen. "This other little plant is a pea and I want you to see if you notice any difference between it and the bean."

She pulled up the wee growth very delicately and they all bent over it as it lay in her hand.

"It hathn't got fat leaveth," cried Dicky.

"Good for Dicky," exclaimed Helen. "He has beaten you girls. You see the food in the pea is packed so tight that the pea gets discouraged about trying to send up those first leaves and gives it up as a bad job. They stay underground and do their feeding from there."

"A sort of cold storage arrangement," smiled Ethel Brown.

"After these peas are a little taller you'd find if you pulled them up that the supply of food had all been used up. There will be nothing down there but a husk."

"What happens when this bean plant uses up all its food?"

"There's nothing left but a sort of skin that drops off. You can see how it works with the bean because that is done above the ground."

"Won't it hurt those plants to pull them up this way?"

"It will set them back, but I planted a good many so as to be able to pull them up at different ages and see how they looked."

"You pulled that out so gently I don't believe it will be hurt much."

"Probably it will take a day or two for it to catch up with its neighbors. It will have to settle its roots again, you see."

"What are you doing this planting for?" asked Dorothy.

"For the class at school. We get all the different kinds of seeds we can—the ones that are large enough to examine easily with only a magnifying glass like this one. Some we cut open and examine carefully inside to see how the new leaves are to be fed, and then we plant others and watch them grow."

"I'd like to know why you never told me about that before?" demanded Ethel Brown. "I'm going to get all the grains and fruits I can right off and plant them. Is all that stuff in a horse chestnut leaf-food?"

"The horse chestnut is a hungry one, isn't it?"

"I made some bulbs blossom by putting them in a tall glass in a dark place and bringing them into the light when they had started to sprout," said Ethel Blue, "but I think this is more fun. I'm going to plant some, too."

"Grandmother Emerson always has beautiful bulbs. She has plenty in her garden that she allows to stay there all winter, and they come up and are scrumptious very early in the Spring. Then she takes some of them into the house and keeps them in the dark, and they blossom all through the cold weather."

"Mother likes bulbs, too," said Dorothy, "crocuses and hyacinths and Chinese lilies—but I never cared much about them. Somehow the bulb itself looks too fat. I don't care much for fat things or people."

"Don't think of it as fat; it's the food supply."

"Well, I think they're greedy things, and I'm not going ever to bother with them. I'll leave them to Mother, but I am really going to plant a garden this summer. I think it will be loads of fun."

"We haven't much room for a garden here," said Helen, "but we always have some vegetables and a few flowers."

"Why don't we have a fine one this summer, Helen?" demanded Ethel Brown. "You're learning a lot about the way plants grow, I should think you'd like to grow them."

"I believe I should if you girls would help me. There never has been any member of the family who was interested, and I wasn't wild about it myself, and I just never got started."

"The truth is," confessed Ethel Brown, "if we don't have a good garden Dorothy here will have something that will put ours entirely in the shade."

The girls all laughed. They never had known Dorothy until the previous summer. When she came to live in Rosemont in September they had learned that she was extremely energetic and that she never abandoned any plan that she attempted. The Ethels knew, therefore, that if Dorothy was going to have a garden the next summer they'd better have a garden, too, or else they would see little of her.

"If we both have gardens Dorothy will condescend to come and see ours once in a while and we can exchange ideas and experiences," continued Ethel Brown.

"I'd love to have a garden," said Ethel Blue. "Do you suppose Roger would be willing to dig it up for us?"

"Dig up what?" asked Roger, stamping into the house in time to hear his name.

The girls told him of their new plan.

"I'll help all of you if you'll plant one flower that I like; plant enough of it so that I can pick a lot any time I want to. The trouble with the little garden we've had is that there weren't enough flowers for more than the centrepiece in the dining-room. Whenever I wanted any I always had to go and give a squint at the dining room table and then do some calculation as to whether there could be a stalk or