seats, and
waging war on intrusive ants and whole colonies of welcoming flies.

"I don't see what the Lord made so many flies for," said Sherm
disgustedly fishing one daintily out of the butter by the tips of its
wings.

"My, they are thick!" said Alice. "Cover up the cake, Chicken Little."

"What shall we do now?" inquired Carol relaxing after the hard labor of
eating three pieces of chicken, two hard-boiled eggs, a generous wedge
of pie, and two chunks of cake.

"Do?--I should think you'd need a rest, Carol," Alice replied slyly. She
had been mentally thanking her stars she didn't have to cook for Carol
very often.

"I say we hunt that old cave," suggested Sherm.

"Huh, Frank says he used to hunt for that confounded old cave when he
was a boy till he wore out enough shoe leather to have one dug."

"I don't care--my father says there used to be one somewhere along here,
but he guesses the mouth must have got covered up when Duck Creek
changed its course. You know the creek used to flow on the other side of
the island there. But when they had that tarnation big freshet about
twenty years ago, it cut through this side too and made the island."

"Yes, I remember hearing my father tell about that flood--it was before
the war," said Alice with interest. "A lot of people got drowned and
they say some of the Seventh Day Adventists thought the end of the world
had come."

"Maybe the cave got washed out," hazarded Carol who was beginning to
feel that Alice's advice to rest sounded good. He felt sleepy.

"Couldn't have--Father said it was quite a ways up the bank. Said he
explored it once when he was a boy. He talks about coming out to hunt
for it himself, but he won't," explained Sherm.

"There's a lot about a big cave in Kentucky in our Geography," put in
Katy who hated to be left out of anything.

"Yep--the Mammoth," said Ernest. "Well, come on, Sherm, let's us have a
try at it."

"Let us go, too, Ern," piped Chicken Little.

"No you don't--you'd get all tired out and want to come back."

Chicken Little opened her mouth to protest but Alice interposed.

"We will think up something nice to do here. We might hunt for it over
on that wooded bank. Nobody seems to know where it was--it's just as
likely to be one place as another."

"We might find some bitter-sweet berries. Mother said she wished we'd
bring her some if we saw any." Gertie was getting to her feet stiffly,
her legs cramped from being doubled unde