"It's ridic'lus to go settling wivout spades," said Sandy.
"Less to carry, and there'll be enough, and it isn't like straight, even ground."
"We must have a blanket. That can come off a bed. It's a mountain, Dave, 'member—the top of a mountain. An' our fambly to get up an' all. It'll be awfly hard," said Sandy, stopping for a moment in his burrowings to mop his heated face. Just then Barbara danced in, planting her feet in great delight in the damp mud Sandy had excavated.
"Me," she demanded, "me too. Barbedie dig"; and, seizing a basket, she began to fill it, in keen emulation of Orme's business-like labour. Orme was a most useful coadjutor in anything. When once set to work, he always went on stolidly till he was told to stop, or till material failed him. Nothing in the way of temptation, no delight or allurement, could turn him aside.
Marjorie lifted her head to meet his gaze.
Marjorie's tools, like his, were her two little fat hands, and these were soon, to her delight, plastered with mud.
"How shall we get her?" inquired David, pausing and looking at the baby, working so ardently. "Must she come too?"
"'Course she must," said Sandy. "We ain't got no other girl. 'Sides, it ud be a shame to leave her out just when the fun begins. She'll have to be fetched. We'll get her to tea."
The boys' heads got together over schemes which grew more and more ambitious, and by the time the passage was cleared of the débris and mud, and the little ones shunted back from discovery of its exit, all details had been planned.