til they had scooped out all the dirt that had been
loosened.

Then the pickaxe men went back and began again on the part that had
been scooped, but the horses had to wait for the dirt to be loosened,
and they stood outside of the cellar.

It was beginning to look a little bit like a cellar now, but a very
shallow one.

And the little boy was getting tired of watching the pickaxes rise and
fall and of listening to the noise the ground made. So he got up.

And his cat saw him getting up, and she ran to him, and she saw that
he was going to the man with the horses, so she ran ahead, with her
bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.

The man saw them coming, and he looked at the little boy and smiled.

"I've got to go now," the little boy said, when he had come to the man.

"So soon?" asked the man. "I hope you aren't tired."

"I think I'd better go home," the little boy said. "P'r'aps my mother
would like to see me."

"I shouldn't wonder if she'd like to see you pretty often," the man
said. "You tell her that you'll be safe here. I'll keep my eye on you."

"How will you get your eye on me?" the little boy asked.

The man laughed. "Will you come again?"

"I'll come to-morrow," the little boy said. "P'r'aps I'll come this
afternoon. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said the man.

And he watched the little boy as he trudged away, dragging his cart,
with his hoe and his shovel rattling in the bottom of it, and with his
cat walking beside him and looking up into his face.

And that's all of this story.

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.

Pretty soo