儿童英语读物 Mystery of the Traveling Tomatoes CHAPTER 4 Worms!

Early Monday before breakfast, the children rode their bikes through the quiet morning streets. As usual, Benny pedaled extra hard, leading all the way to The Applewood Café. He coasted around to the garden.



“Oh, no!” He screeched 1 to a stop. “Our black gold!”



Three huge garbage cans lay on their sides. Their lids were torn off and their insides spilled out. Scattered 2 on the ground around them were wilted 3 lettuce 4 leaves and broccoli 5 stems, watermelon rinds and dead flowers, grass clippings, and mounds 6 of black dirt. The dirt looked like it was moving. It was moving. Hundreds of worms squiggled around.



“Quick,” shouted Henry, grabbing a shovel 7, “before they get away!”



Jessie picked up the cans. Henry shoveled 8 wormy dirt into each one. Violet pulled on her gardening gloves and scooped 9 up the food scraps 10, tossing them into the cans. Benny raced around, picking up all the wiggly worms he could find. He set them gently into the cans.



Now the four children finished cleaning up the spilled cans. “Raccoons must have done this,” Jessie said.



Violet studied the latches 11 on the cans. “I don’t think raccoons could open these.”



“And I don’t think raccoons wear boots.” Benny pointed 12 to footprints. The deep boot treads made a V shaped pattern. One V had no point on the bottom. The children followed the prints from the garbage cans, through the garden, and out into the alley 13.



At first, the boot treads left a lot of dirt to track. But, as the dirt wore off, the trail became harder and harder to follow. After a block, the children could not see the prints.



“Why would someone dump our black gold?” asked Violet as they headed back. But no one could think of a single reason.



Benny spotted 14 something shiny glinting in the tall weeds along Applewood’s alley fence. He reached in and picked up a toy car. “Aw, all the wheels are missing,” he said, tossing it into a garbage can. There were a few green cloth bags in the garbage, like the one he used to make Spooky’s head. Maybe they should make another scarecrow. Spooky wasn’t scaring anything.



“Come on, Benny,” Henry said, running toward the old building next door. “Let’s build up our buried treasure.”



Tall stacks of tires leaned against the old building, which used to be Duffy’s Garage. The boys lifted a few tires off the piles and rolled them to their garden. They’d set the tires on top of a circle of other old tires. Inside the circle, leafy potato vines grew out of black soil. Benny called the potatoes their “buried treasure” because the potatoes grew under the dirt. Every couple of weeks, as the plants grew taller, the boys added more tires and more soil.



Jessie knelt in the cucumber patch, hunting for ripe cucumbers that hid among the leaves. She noticed that the droopy sunflowers now stood nice and straight. Someone had tied them to tall bamboo sticks. “Did you prop 15 up the sunflowers?” she asked her sister.



Violet looked surprised. “No,” she said. “Mrs. Shea must have done that after yesterday’s race.”



“Hey!” said Benny. “Somebody moved my green peppers!” He measured a row of plants, then checked his measuring workbook. “I planted these peppers twelve inches apart. Now the plants are all messed up. Just like my tomato plants.”



“Maybe the same person who tipped over our compost cans moved your peppers,” said Jessie. Benny checked the dirt for boot prints, but there were none. There also weren’t any animal footprints—no raccoons or rabbits.



All he saw were regular old shoe prints, from regular old shoes.



“Here’s something,” said Henry, pointing to a dent 16 in the soil. “I’ve seen these strange marks in the dirt all around the garden today.”



Some of Spooky the Scarecrow’s straw poked 17 out of his shirt. Benny tucked it back inside. “Spooky,” he said, “have you been messing with our garden?” But the green-faced scarecrow just looked down at Benny and smiled his crooked 18 smile.



Mrs. Shea called them in for breakfast. Violet spooned mango and strawberry jam into the center of thin pancakes Mr. Shea called crepes. “Crepes rhymes with apes,” he’d said. “But crepes taste better.”



Violet rolled each crepe into a log and took bite after delicious bite. Benny filled his plate with scrambled 19 eggs and fresh-baked whole wheat bread. Jessie cut a jumbo raisin 20 muffin into slices, carefully spreading each slice with sweet butter. And Henry helped himself to second servings of everything.



As Mrs. Shea brought a pitcher 21 of milk to the table, the children told her about the overturned compost cans. “I can’t imagine who would do such mischief,” she said. “There is nothing inside those cans of value.”



“Except worm … er … black gold,” said Benny. He figured it wasn’t polite to say “worm poop” at the breakfast table.



As they finished eating, Mr. Shea came out of the kitchen with a platter of melon slices and strawberries. He set down a new picture puzzle and winked 22. “This one is super-duper hard.”



The children studied two nearly identical photos of a soccer game. They worked for a long time but found only fourteen differences. Once again, Benny spotted the last and hardest clue. Two players’ helmets had different colored chinstraps.



“Is it time to go to the armored car company yet?” Benny asked when they finished.



Henry glanced at his watch. “Yes,” he said.



This time, Henry led the way as they rode their bikes across town.