"And well soon have tomatoes," added his father. "Now that I have driven
away the eating worms the vines will grow better and the tomatoes will
ripen faster."
A week later on some of the vines there were quite large green tomatoes.
Hal and Mab watched them eagerly, noting how they grew and swelled larger,
until, one day, Mab came running in, crying:
"Oh, one tomato has a red cheek!"
"That's where it got sunburned," said her father with a smile. "That shows
they are getting ripe. Soon we will have some for the table."
In a few days more tomatoes on the vines had red, rosy cheeks, some being
red all over. These Daddy Blake let Hal and Mab pick, and they brought
them in the house.
"Oh, we shall have some of our own tomatoes for lunch!" cried Mother Blake
when she saw them. "How fine! Our garden is beginning to give us back
something to pay us for all the work we put on it."
"But these are Daddy's tomatoes," said Hal. "He had the first thing, after
the radishes, for the table from his garden, and Mab and I haven't
anything. Daddy'll get his own prize."
"No, I promise you I will not take the prize for these tomatoes, even if I
did raise them in my part of the garden," said Daddy Blake with a smile.
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