The more I thought the more I couldn't think of anything. All I could think of was how big Doctor Miller was, and I guess Bony thought the same thing. I thought of his whiskers, too.
You 're always kind of scared of a doctor, almost like you're scared of a minister. They ain't like common folks. Common folks are just men, except when they are your fathers; but ministers and doctors are men and something else, and Doctor Miller was more doctory than any other doctor in town. That was why so many folks had him. He had red-brown whiskers and nothing on his chin or upper lip, and his whiskers were not stiff and tough like whiskers generally are, but smooth and silky and fluffy. He laughed a lot, too, and was always smiling, but he knew all about your insides better than you did. It is creepy to see a man smiling so much and feel that he knows more about you than you do yourself. And so you were mighty scared of him.
Well, we didn't think of anything, and I went home feeling pretty mean and went in the alley way and my mother was keeping supper for me and had my things and sister's all ready for us to go over to Aunt Nell's and after supper she kissed us and we went. She gave me a dollar and she gave Sis fifty cents, and she hugged us a long time before she let us go.
The next morning Aunt Nell started right in on me. She made me go upstairs and brush my hair again and looked at my finger nails and in my ears, and then said I didn't look as well as usual and wanted to know if I slept well. I got away as soon as I could and went up to the cave. Swatty and Bony was there already, digging at the roof of the back room of the cave.
“What you doing that for?” I asked. “If you dig up there much more the roof will bust through.”
“Well, ain't that what we want it to do?” Swatty asked.
“Why do we?” I asked back.
“You come on and help us work,” he said, “and I'll tell you why.”
So I helped them work and Swatty told me he had thought of a bully plan. I wouldn't have thought of it in a thousand years. I had stayed awake all night—or anyway almost half an hour—trying to think how we could get Doctor Miller into the cave, and all I could think of was grabbing him somehow and tying ropes to him and yanking him up to the door of the cave, and I knew we couldn't do it, because we weren't strong enough. But Swatty had thought it all out, like he always does. I might have known he would.
We went ahead and dug at the roof of the cave, and pretty soon we dug through to daylight. It took us all day and the dirt we got we spaded into the tunnel between the two rooms and filled it up good and solid, except a short way out of the front room. The next day we worked hard, too. We dug out more of the roof of the back room, and then worked on the door of the cave so we could fasten it up sound and quick when we got the doctor in it. We took the stove out and everything else he could use to dig with, and when we had to go home for supper we had it all ready. Swatty said so.