"And what is the hole for?" the little boy asked. "Is it to plant something in?" "No," said the man, "it's going to be the cellar of a house." "Oh," said the little boy, "is it? And do you think I could help you dig? I've got my shovel and my cart." "I'm afraid," said the man, "that it wouldn't do. You see that great scoop?" He pointed to a big iron scoop that was in the cart. The little boy looked and nodded. "Is that a scoop? What is it for?" "The horses drag it, and a man takes hold of those two handles like plough-handles, and it scoops the dirt right up." The little boy nodded again. "You can watch us if you want to," the man said then. "But you must be careful not to get in the way of the horses." "And can my kitty watch too?" The man laughed and said his kitty could watch if she wanted to. And the other men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to drive the head on. And they walked slowly in under the strings between the boards and they got in a line. And the little boy sat down on a stone that was just the right size and watched them. His cat came and got right between his feet. Then the man at the end of the line raised his pickaxe high above his head, and the next man did the same, and then the third man, and so on to the other end of the line. And the first man struck his pickaxe down hard into the ground, and it made the ground grunt, _Mnh!_ And the second man did the same, and the ground gave another grunt, _Mnh!_ And then the third man did the same thing, and so on to the other end of the line. Then the first man was ready again, so that the sound of the pickaxes was as regular as the ticking of the tall clock. When the pickaxe was in the ground, each man gave a kind of a pry that loosened the dirt. And when they had picked, the men went ahead a little short step and picked a new place and left the loosened dirt behind, so that, pretty soon, they were walking on the dirt that they had loosened. The cat had got tired of lying between the little boy's feet and having no attention paid to her, so she got up and ran off a little way, and stopped and looked back, but the little boy wouldn't look. So she walked back, with her bushy tail straight up in the air, and rubbed against the little boy's legs. Still the little boy didn't notice her. And the reason why he didn't notice her was that the horses were being hitched to the big iron scoop. As soon as the horses were hitched to the scoop, they started walking along; and the scoop turned right over on its face, upside down, because the man didn't have hold of the handles.