way; "but we are going to beat that record next year. We shall rotate
our crop, planting our corn where the beans were this season. That's a
thing fellows ought to know; that it's a mighty good thing to rotate
crops."

"What's that?" asked Philip.

"Rotating crops means not always planting the same crop on the same
piece of land, but changing every two or three years. It happens that
beans are very good to plant before corn. They do not take from the
soil, The Chief says, what the corn needs. So a piece of soil planted to
beans gets in shape for corn planting another year. It would not be well
to plant corn on a certain piece of land more than two successive
years. Then something else should be planted on this land and the corn
put somewhere else."

"Good!" said The Chief. "Some day we shall discuss rotation of crops
more fully. There are no end of topics for us to work over this next
winter."




XV

THE GIRLS' SECRET WORK


The girls were each to raise something special at their own home and
then each was to have a share in a big garden. Katharine, who had quite