So Mary and I went to Lagunita with our rake and tin lunch-pail to hunt for dragons. No shining armor; no great two-handed sword; no cap of invisibility. Just a rake and a tin lunch-pail.

"Where, Mary, do you think is the likeliest place for the dragon?" I ask.

Mary answers promptly, "There at the foot of the steep stony bank where the big willow-tree hangs over."

We go there. I grasp my rake firmly with both hands. I reach far out over the shallow water. Then I beat the rake suddenly down through the water to the bottom, and with a quick strong pull I drag it out, raking out with it a great mass of oozy mud and matted leaves. I drag this well up on shore, and both Mary and I flop down on our knees and begin pawing about in it. Suddenly Mary calls out, "I've got one," and holds up in her fingers an extraordinary, kicking, twisting creature with six legs, a big head, and a thick, ugly body on which seem to be the beginnings of several fins or wings. It has, this creature, two great staring eyes, and stout, sharp-pointed spines stick out from various parts of the body.

"Put him in the lunch-pail," I shout. I had already filled it half-full of water from the lake.

Then I found one; then Mary another, and then I still another. It was truly great sport, this dragon-hunting.

We put them all into the lunch-pail where they lay sullenly on the bottom, glaring at each other, but not offering to fight, as we rather hoped they would.

Then, what to do? These dragons in their regular lairs at the bottom of Lagunita might do a lot of most interesting things, but dredged up in this summary way and deposited in a strange tin pail in the glaring light of day, they seemed wholly indisposed to carry on any performances of dragon for our benefit. So we decided to take them home, and try to fix up for them a still smaller lakelet than Lagunita; one, say, in a tub! Then, perhaps, they would feel more at home and ease, and might do something for us.

So we took them home. And we fixed a tub with sand in the bottom, water over that, and over the top of the tub a screen of netting that would let air and sunlight in, but not dragons out. Then we collected some miscellaneous small water-beasties and a few water-plants, and put them in, and so really had a very comfortable and home-like place for the dragons. They seemed to take to it all right; we called our new lakelet Monday Pond, because of some relation between the tub and washday, I suppose, and we had very good fun with our dragons for several weeks. Think of the advantage of having your dragon right at home! If it is a bad day, or we are lazy, or there may be visitors who stay too long so there is only a little time for ourselves, how convenient it is to have a dragon—or indeed a whole brood of dragons—right in your study. Much better, of course, than to have to sail to a distant island and tramp through leagues of forest or thorny bushes or over burning desert or among spouting volcanoes to find your dragon, as most princes in fairy stories have to do.