out at our four-acre estate on Long Island, that she pulls this sarcastic stuff. Havin' inspected the baby critical without findin' anything special to kick about, she suggests that she'd like to look over the grounds.

"Oh, yes, Torchy," chimes in Vee, "do show Auntie your garden."

Maybe you don't get that "your garden."92 It's only Vee's way of playin' me as a useful and industrious citizen. Course, I did buy the seeds and all the shiny hoes and rakes and things, and I studied up the catalogues until I could tell the carrots from the cucumbers; but I must admit that beyond givin' the different beds the once-over every now and then, and pullin' up a few tomato plants that I thought was weeds, I didn't do much more than underwrite the enterprise.

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As a matter of fact, it was mostly Leon Battou, the old Frenchy who does our cookin', that really ran the garden. Say, that old boy would have something green growin' if he lived in the subway and had to bring down his real estate in paper bags. It was partly on his account, you know, that we left our studio apartment and moved out in the forty-five minutes commutin' zone. Then, too, there was Joe Cirollo, who comes in by the day to cut the grass and keep the flower beds slicked up, and do the heavy spadin'. And with Vee keepin' books on what was spent and what we got you can guess I wasn't overworked. Also it's a cinch that garden plot just had to hump itself and make good.

Auntie ain't wise to all this, though. So she raises her eyebrows and remarks: "A garden? Really! I should like to see it. A few radishes and spindly lettuce, I suppose?"

"Say, come have a look!" says I.93

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And when I'd pointed out the half acre of potatoes, and the long rows of corn and string beans and peas—and I hope I called 'em all by their right names—I sure had the old girl hedgin' some. But trust her!

"With so much land, though," she goes on, "it seems to me you ought to be raising your eggs and chickens as well."

"Oh, we've planned for all that," says I, "ducks and hens and geese and turkeys; maybe pheasants and quail."

"Quail!" says Auntie. "Why, I didn't know one could raise quail. I thought they——"

"When I get started raisin' things," says I, "I'm apt to 

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