Lucy paused a moment, considering whether what Royal said could be true; but at length she added,—
“Why, Royal, there couldn’t be any lead pipe in the ground, because, if there was, they would have dug up the grass around there, when they put it down. But the ground was not dug up at all. It was smooth and grassed all over the yard.”
Lucy was wrong. She ought not to have been so positive. It is very unsafe for children to be positive, in saying what is and what is not possible. And Royal was wrong too. He might safely have said, that he presumed that there was a lead pipe under the ground; but he ought not to have been so positive of what he had no means of certainly knowing.
The question was not settled until Lucy went to school the next day. She then asked Mary Jay about it.
“There is a wooden pipe, under the ground,” said Mary Jay.
“A wooden pipe?” repeated Lucy.
“Yes,” said Mary Jay, “a pipe made of wooden logs, with holes bored through them, from end to end. Then these logs are put together under the ground, and thus they make a long wooden pipe, and the water comes through that.”
“Where does it come from?” said Lucy.
“It comes from a spring, on a hill behind the house. The spring is pretty high, and so the water runs down until it gets to the post, and then, as it cannot get any farther, it spouts out into the air.”
“I thought it came from the box of water underneath,” said Lucy.