“Oh! Carlota, we’ve stumbled into the beautifullest cave! It is! I believe it! These sharp points are stal-ag-mites. High up must be the other things—stal-ac-tites! Father said he’d take me sometime to a cave almost as wonderful as that Mammoth one in Kentucky, and I do believe we’re in it now! Oh! how glad I am the ‘norther’ sent us to it!”
“I don’t understand such big words.”
“They’re no bigger than the ones you talk about your old flowers.”
“My father says that real bo-tan-i-cal names are just the same all over the world. It’s best to learn them right in the first place, cause then you don’t have to unlearn them afterward.”
“It’s just the same about stones. I couldn’t explain to you, Carlota, since you’re only a girl; but knowing about stones helps about mines. If our father wasn’t a ge-ol-o-gist and a min-er-al-o-gist, the rich men away off wouldn’t hire him, as they do, to ‘prospect’ and explore their mountains.”
“Flowers help, too. Course. It’s this way, Carlos. Try to understand. Funny! A boy who knows most every rock there is doesn’t know a dozen blossoms. Plants ‘talk,’ my father says, to people who have learned their ‘language.’ The sort of plants they are shows what’s in the soil they live on. All plants cannot live on one soil. I—”
“Pooh! That’s a mistake, I guess. What about our mother’s garden? Any flower—”
Benoni ended their discussion by going forward again, after his brief rest. As they progressed the light strengthened and they stumbled less; and in the relief of this, Carlos began to sing. But his song was interrupted by a cry which set them trembling in terror.
“Ah, ho! Ah, ha, ho!”
The shout came from behind them, and its echo through that ghostly place was very terrifying.