But a bright thought came to me. I remembered something. Several days before I had tramped along this hillside road near which Mary and I were lying and I had seen—well, just wait. So I said to Mary: "But I know where there is a Morrowbie Jukes pit, several of them, indeed, near here. Sha'n't we go and see them?"
"Why, of course," said Mary rather severely.
"Let us go galloping as Morrowbie Jukes did," said I. So we took hold of hands and as soon as we got out of the chaparral, we went galloping, hop, hop, hoppity, hop, down the road. I must confess that I got out of breath pretty soon and my knees seemed to creak a little. And when a swift motor-car came exploding by, going up the hill, all the people stared and smiled to see an elderly gentleman with spectacles and a long coat hop-hopping along with a yellow-haired red-cheeked little girl in knee skirts. But we don't mind people much! They simply don't know all the things that go with being happy.
Pretty soon—and it was high time, for I had only three breaths left—we came to a place where the road bent sharply around the hillside and was especially broad.
"Now, Mary," I said, "be careful and don't fall in. I'm afraid I could not get you out."
"Fall in where? Get me out of what?" asked Mary, quite puzzled. She was staring about excitedly, looking most of the time down into the cañon with its spiry redwood trees pushing far up from the bottom. And then suddenly she saw. She flopped down on her hands and knees in the warm sand by the roadside and cried out, "What funny little holes!"
"Why, Mary," I said with pained surprise. "You don't really mean to call these awful Morrowbie Jukes pits 'funny little holes'! That isn't fair after all we've done to find them. Especially after my galloping all the way right to the very edge of this largest one."
As I spoke I pointed it out with the toe of my shoe, but inadvertently filled it all up by poking a couple of tablespoonfuls of sand and dust into it. But size is quite a relative matter, and for the tiny creatures with whom Mary and I have to deal, the little crater-like holes in the sand of the roadside are large and dangerous pits. We sprawled down on our stomachs among the pits to see what we could see.
Mary saw first. Ah, those bright eyes! My spectacles are rather in the way out-of-doors, I find. But if I keep on getting younger—and I certainly am younger since I got acquainted with Mary—I shall be able soon to leave them at home in my study when I go out to see things.