TO this hour one of the authors of this book prefers unripe Greengages to ripe ones, because they remind her of those that grew against the wall of her own garden when she was a child, and which she always ate long before they were ripe. In her days children did imprudent things of this kind, but no doubt you modern children know too much about the laws of hygiene to run such risks—at least, we hope so, or we might be blamed for letting you know that anyone could eat unripe fruit and survive. We are not going to tell you much about fruit and vegetables, because a child is not likely to want his little garden to be a kitchen garden. In case you are a town child, and have never seen vegetables growing, we may as well tell you that they take a great deal of room. We know a boy in Germany who went to live in a ground-floor flat that had a tiny garden belonging to it, the kind of garden in which you can have three rose-bushes and a border of pinks. He was so fond of gardening that after school on a winter day he would amuse himself with a trowel shovelling the bare soil up and down; but he knew so little about it that he wrote to his aunt in England, saying he wished to grow Potatoes, Parsley, Mint, Honeysuckle, Runner Beans, and Vegetable Marrows. The aunt had to explain as well as she could by letter that in a garden of that size he could only grow about two Potatoes, and that he had better try a few Tulips and Daffodils instead. But when spring came she sent him some Vegetable Marrow seeds, and they were the source of a great and joyful excitement later in the year. The boy was away in the country most of the early summer, and when he got back to his little garden in August he found a huge ripe Marrow and smaller ones coming on. We can’t advise you to grow Vegetable Marrows, however, as they take a great deal of room, and require a mound or ridge. If you have a warm brick wall you should have a Peach, a Pear, a Golden Plum, a Greengage, or a White Heart Cherry. If you have a spare corner, plant a Gooseberry or a Currant bush. In your border try to grow a few Lettuces and Radishes, and some Mustard and Cress for the schoolroom tea. MUSTARD AND CRESS.