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Show LITTLE RED TOM chance that he would have tried to grow red before he grew big. But he laid her lesson to heart, and day by day, week by week, his rotundity expanded, while his verdancy remained. It was a very beautiful life that they lived in the garden; and if the thoughts and feelings that unfolded there could be known, perhaps they would seem even more wonderful than the things which the old German gardener cultivated. Away at one end were the beds of old-fashioned flowers: hollyhocks and phlox and stocks, coreopsis and calliopsis, calendula and campanula, fox-gloves and monkshoods and lady-slippers. At the other end were the strawberry-bed and the asparagus-bed. In between, there were long rows of all kinds of vegetables and small fruits and fragrant herbs. Who can tell what ideas and emotions were stirring in those placid companies of leguminous com· rades? What aspirations toward a loftier life in the climbing beans? What high spirits in the corn? What light and airy dreaiiiJI on the asparagus-bed? What philosophy among the sage ? Imagine what great schemes were hatching among the egg-plants, 184 \' LITTLE RED TOM and what hot feelings stung the peppers when the raspberries crowded them! Tommy, from his central place in the garden must have felt the agitation of this mimic world around him. Many a time, no doubt, he was tempted to give himself up to one or another of the contiguous influences, and throw himself into the social tide for "one glorious hour of crowded life." But his mother always held him back. "No, my Tommykin, stay with me. It is not for you to climb a pole like a bean or wave in the wind like an asparagus stalk, or rasp your neighbours like a raspberry. Be modest, be natural, be true to yourself. Stay with me and grow fat." When the sunshine of the long July days flooded the garden, glistening on the silken leaves of the corn, wilting the potato-blossoms, unfolding the bright yellow flowers of the okra and the melon, Tom would fain have pushed himself out into the full tide of light and heat. But his mother bent tenderly over him. "Not yet, my child; it is not time for you to bear the heat of the day. A litUe shade is good for you. 185 |