Mary and I had seen enough of the Morrowbie Jukes pits. So we went back to our little open sunny spot in the chaparral on the hillside and lay quiet and silent for a long time. Then Mary murmured, "I wonder how the ant-lion digs its pit."
"I can tell you, Mary," I replied. "For a man who once saw one digging told me. It is this way: First he makes a circular groove the full circumference of the top of the pit. Then he burrows into the sand inside of the groove and piles sand-grains on top of his flat, horny, shovel-like head with his fore feet. This sand he tosses over the groove so that it will fall outside. He works his way all around the groove, doing this over and over, and then makes another groove inside the first, and digs up and tosses the sand out as before. And so on, groove after groove, each inside the one made before, thus gradually making a conical pit with the sides as steep as the loose sand will lie. The pit must always be made in a dry sandy spot, and is usually located in a warm sunny place at the foot of a large rock. This man said that it is easy to get the ant-lions to dig pits in boxes of sand in the house, and so we can try with our 'collected' fellow."
Mary was silent some moments. Then she said softly, "But how will he get anything to eat?"
"Why," said I, "of course we can give him—" Mary looked up at me in a special way she has. I go on, more slowly, but still without very much hesitation: "But, of course, we sha'n't do that, shall we?"
And Mary said quietly: "No, we sha'n't."
We rested our chins on our hands and lay still, looking down over the chaparral-covered hillside and far out across the hazy valley. On the distant bay were little white specks, small schooners that carry wood and tan-bark and hay from the bay towns to San Francisco; and across the blue bay lifted the bare, brown mountains of the Coast Range, with always that gleaming white spot of the Observatory a-tiptop of the highest peak. It was a soft, languid, lazy day. Such a peace-giving, relaxing, healing day! And we were so enveloped by it, Mary and I, that we simply lay still and happy, with hardly a word. I had, of course, intended to give Mary an informing lecture about how the ugly, horrid ant-lion finally stops preying on ants and rolls himself up in a neat little silk-and-sand ball, and changes into a beautiful, slender-bodied, gauzy-winged creature without any resemblance at all to its earlier incarnation. But I didn't. It was too fine a day to spoil with informing lectures.
And so Mary and I lay still and happy. Finally it was time to go. As we went down the road we passed again the place of the pits, and Mary looked once more at the neat little craters with their patient waiting jaws at the bottom.
"I wonder," she said, musingly, "if Mr. Kipling ever saw an ant-lion pit."
"I wonder," said I.
