"No, we'll take turns digging. If we made such a big hole it would take too long. First I'll dig and throw out the dirt, and you can throw it farther on, so it won't roll back in the hole. Then, when I get tired of digging in the hole, you can get in and dig."
"That'll be lots of fun!" exclaimed Laddie. "Won't Uncle Fred be s'prised when he sees a well full of water?"
"Maybe it won't be quite full," said Russ. "But we may get some."
The boys, of course, could not dig very fast. The shovels they had were rather small, and did not hold much dirt. But they were fully large enough for two such little boys.
The earth was somewhat sandy, and there were not many large stones on Uncle Fred's ranch. Of course, the digging was not as easy as it had been at the beach where Cousin Tom lived, but Russ and Laddie did not mind this. They were digging for fun, as much as for anything else, and they really did not have to do it.
So they dug away, first one and then the other getting down in the hole, until they had made it so large that, even when Laddie stood up in it, his head hardly came up to the top of the ground. Russ, being taller, stuck a little more out of the hole than did his brother.
"Do you see any water yet?" asked Laddie, when Russ had been digging, in his turn, for some little time.
"No, not yet," was the answer. "It's awful dry."
"We could get some water from the spring and pour it in," said Laddie. "Then it would look like a well."
"But all the water would run out, if we just poured it in, same as it ran out when we dug a hole at the beach and let the waves fill it," objected Russ. "We'll dig down until we come to some regular water. Then it will be a real well."