Mrs. Grant shook her head, half reprovingly. “I believe you are, Lon. Still, I remember when——”
“When I could eat a meal like these youngsters have just stowed away,” Lon put in. “Yes’m, yes’m; that’s so. But I’ll say this, ma’am: I didn’t get many such chances in my time to treat myself like an anacondy snake same as these youngsters have.”
“Nonsense! They’ve just nice, wholesome appetites.”
Lon chuckled again. “Well, maybe you’re right, at that. Fillin’ a growin’ boy is a good deal like pourin’ water into a sieve. But jest for the time bein’, I’d say, you’ve got this crowd full to the brim.”
The Shark rose rather jerkily, and walked up to the profile map. He regarded it with a fascination like that the ill-omened vase at the hotel had had for Poke. Mr. Grant joined him.
“My father made that,” said the farmer. “You see, it was this way: One winter he was laid up with a broken leg, and wanted to have something to keep him busy. He’d done some work on the big map at the state house—he was a surveyor, among other things, you understand—and it struck him he’d fix up this affair for our valley. It happened he’d run levels all over it, and had his records; so he had plenty to go by. And they do say this is amazing accurate. Why, when the government men came through here a few years back——”
“I know—they mapped all this region,” the Shark interrupted. “Computed elevations, set monuments, all that sort of thing.”
“Well, they found father had hit mighty close to the mark. And their monuments—that’s your word for ’em, eh?—you can find three-four of ’em scattered around. Mostly they’re on the hills, but down by the river they set one on a little rise. If ’twa’n’t for the snow you could find it easily.”
The Shark ran his eye over the map. “The valley’s really like a big bowl,” said he, meditatively. “And that’s a mighty narrow outlet—place we came through, where the bridges are—more like the neck of a bottle. I should think the ice would jam there. Then if there should be a flood—say, things would happen!”
“So they would. But the big dam up above’ll hold, I guess. You see, years ago there was a scheme to turn the whole valley into a reservoir, but it’d have taken more money than the folks could raise. So they went up-stream a few miles, and put in their dam there. But we ain’t had any floods in Sugar Valley, for all the mouth of it’s like the mouth of a bottle, as you were saying.”