to cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously.
The sun could get at them and warm
them, and when the rain came down it could reach
them at once, so they began to feel very much
alive.

Mary was an odd, determined little person, and
now she had something interesting to be determined
about, she was very much absorbed, indeed.
She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily,
only becoming more pleased with her work every
hour instead of tiring of it. It seemed to her like
a fascinating sort of play. She found many more
of the sprouting pale green points than she had
ever hoped to find. They seemed to be starting
up everywhere and each day she was sure she
found tiny new ones, some so tiny that they barely
peeped above the earth. There were so many
that she remembered what Martha had said about
the "snowdrops by the thousands," and about
bulbs spreading and making new ones. These had
been left to themselves for ten years and perhaps
they had spread, like the snowdrops, into thousands.
She wondered how long it would be before
they showed that they were flowers. Sometimes
she stopped digging to look at the garden
and try to imagine what it would be like when it
was covered with thousands of lovely things in
bloom.

[[112]]

p111 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p112w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p113

v?