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THE GARDENER AND THE FAMILY 1057
two remarkable summers for fruit trees ; over all the country these had succeeded well.
Time passed; the family one day dined with the court. The day after, the gardener was sent for by his master. They had at dinner got melons from His Majesty's greenhouse which were so juicy and so full of flavour.
1 You must go to His Majesty's gardener, good Larsen, and get for us some of the seeds of these precious melons.'
' But His Majesty's gardener has got the seeds from us ! ' said the gardener, quite delighted.
' Then the man has known how to bring them to a higher development,' answered the master ; ' every melon was excellent ! '
' Yes, then I may be proud !' said the gardener. ' I may tell your lordship that the court gardener this year has not been successful with his melons, and when he saw how lovely ours were, and tasted them, he ordered three of them to be sent up to the castle.'
' Larsen ! don't imagine that they were the melons from our garden ! '
' I believe it ! ' said the gardener, and he went to the court gardener and got from him a written assurance that the melons at the king's table had come from the gardens of the manor.
It was really a great surprise for the family, and they did not keep the story a secret; they showed the assurance, and they sent melon seeds far and wide, just as they had sent cuttings before.
About these they got news that they caught on and set quite excellent fruit, and it was called after the family's estate, so that the name could now be read in English, German, and French. They had never thought of that before.
' If only the gardener won't get too great an opinion of himself !' said the family. -«o
But he took it in another manner : he would onl\y£lace now to bring forward his name as one of the bestild become in the country, and tried every year to britYne family. The excellent in the gardening line, ancL^'old box-hedges with heard that the very first fruitsJr here a thicket of plants, and pears, were really tb& forest.
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