Sometimes she pulled the pea pods off their stems and ate the peas inside.

She liked them because they were lovely and sweet. Her father said: I don’t know why, but those peas I planted a few months ago weren’t any good, there are hardly any peas growing on them. And another time Mair pulled up all the carrots and ate them,

and then she remembered what her father had said about the peas and felt bad, so she put the stalks back into the earth hoping they would grow again, but they didn’t. There is someone eating all the carrots in the garden, said her father, so Mair didn’t eat them any more. She ate the gooseberries instead.