She could see
that it took real skill and strength to keep
the line even, and to avoid the stones.
Sometimes the plough struck a hidden stone,
and then the man was jerked almost off
his feet. But he only laughed, and said,
"Tough piece of land; be a lot better the
second year."
When he had ploughed, the man went
back to his cart and unloaded another
farm implement. This one was like a
three-cornered platform of wood, with a
long, curved, strong rake under it. It was
called a harrow, and it looked like this:--
The man harnessed the horses to it, and
then he stood on the platform and drove all
over the strip of land. It was fun to watch,
but perhaps it was a little hard to do. The
man's weight kept the harrow steady, and
let the teeth of the rake scratch and cut
the ground up, so that it did not stay in
ridges.
"He scrambles the ground, father!"
said Margery.
"It needs scrambling," laughed her
father. "We are going to get more weeds
than we want on this green land, and the
more the ground is broken, the fewer there
will be."
After the ploughing and harrowing, the
man drove off, and Margery's father said
he would do the rest of the work in the
late afternoons, when he came home from
business; they could not afford too much
help, he said, and he had learned to take
care of a garden when he was a boy.
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