II
THE MASON STORY
Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls.
One morning he was sitting right down in the gravel of his front walk, the walk that led to the front door of the house that he lived in, and he had been digging in the gravel. The hole that he was digging was square.
And he had picked the dirt all over with a big nail, and pried it loose, and then he had pretended that his shovel was a big iron scoop that could scoop the dirt out just the way the big scoop did when it was dragged by the horses.
For he had been watching the men dig a cellar in the field next to his house.
And his cat was there, rolling in the gravel and playing with the air.