AUGUST 3: Telephone Peas
“Hello, Telephone Peas and String-Beans,” said Lord Lettuce. “Lady Lettuce and the Lettuce youngsters are coming up, too, and there are going to be lots of crops of us. We make a fine salad, we’re so young and tender and fresh. Seems to me, Telephone Peas, you hurried me up. You know this is our second crop. We’ve been here before. But I do believe it was your very name that hurried me.
“I heard you say it and I acted as my relatives say people do when they hear the telephone. I’ve even heard that they’ve left the salad on their plates and have answered the telephone before they ate their salad. Yes, your very name and saying it must have hurried us.”
“Well,” said the Telephone Peas, “we feel up to date. We don’t know that there is any special reason for our name, but we have grown to like it mighty well. We’re supposed to be a large, good kind, too; in fact, one of the best there are.”
“Dear me,” said one of the String-Beans, “I wish some one would call our family the Airplane String-Beans or something like that. Or perhaps we might be called the Submarine String-Beans.”
“There wouldn’t be much sense to that,” said the Potato, almost ready to eat, “for you are up on vines. Now we might have that name because we’re in the ground, though it is true we are not under the water.”
And the garden vegetables all agreed that that was true but that the Telephone Peas had a fine family name in reality.