Little Miss Oddity by Amy Ella Blanchard

It was a queer jumbled up place, that back yard of the house where Cassy and Jerry Law lived; old barrels tumbled to pieces in one corner, empty tomato cans rolled against cast-off shoes in another; here bits of broken crockery wedged themselves in between a lot of shingles, and there a pile of iron scraps crowded against a bottomless chair; on a clothes-line flapped several pairs of overalls and a stunted little tree bore upon its branches sundry stockings of various sizes and conditions.

It was a discouraging looking place, but Cassy, intently bending over a pile of dirt near the bottomless chair, did not heed anything but the fact that two tiny green shoots were poking themselves up from the unpromising soil. She was a thin-faced, bright-eyed child, not pretty, but with an eager, wistful expression, and as her face lit up with a sudden smile she looked unusually intelligent.