130 MAEY'S GARDEN AND HOW IT GREW 



ground, just as flowers like to be put in water. I saw 

 Mr. Trommel do this once," she said conclusively. 

 "It's 'heeling in.'" 



"Are you all ready to put the others in?" asked 

 the assistant. 



Mary nodded. "Don't you see my trench? The 

 marking-string 's there, too. Mr. Trommel said to 

 leave the string until I 

 had theedging planted." 

 "I'll hold the plants," 

 suggested Randolph 

 Findlayson, "and you 

 push the dirt around the roots. It 's easy to get them 

 straight with the string there. I 've got him right 

 against the string, Mary." 



"And he must be in just as deep as he was before," 

 said Mr. Trommel's under-gardener, in her most pro- 

 fessional manner, "or it interferes with his breathing 

 that 's what Mr. Trommel says. But you know," 

 she confided to her assistant as she covered the roots 

 of the little privet plant, pushing and poking the 

 earth with small brown fingers, "when we first made 

 the cuttings, I put one of them in the sand upside 

 down, and it grew ! And when I asked Mr. Trommel 

 how it could breathe that way, he said privet was 



