At that moment the colored man from Georgia stood at her elbow with a steaming plate of soup.  Lucy looked at him askance.  Why couldn’t he have been a Chinaman with a pigtail?  She had told Bab she was almost sure there would be a “China cook” at the mountains, and when he passed the soup he would say, “Have soup-ee?” Bab had been in Europe and in Maine and in California, but knew very little of Chinamen and had often said she “wanted to eat China cooking.”

The dinner was excellent.  Eddo enjoyed it very much for a while; then his head began to nod over his plate, his spoon waved uncertainly in the air, and Maggie had to be sent for to take him away from the table.

The ride up the mountain had been so fatiguing that by eight o’clock all the Dunlees, little and big, were glad to find themselves snugly in bed.  They slept late, every one of them, and even the woodpeckers, tapping on the roof next morning, failed to arouse them with their “Jacob, Jacob, wake up, wake up, Jacob!”

After breakfast Edith happened to leave the dining-room just behind Mrs. McQuilken, who held her two cats cuddled up in her arms like babies, and was kissing their foreheads and calling them “mamma’s precious darlings.”  As Edith heard this she could not help smiling, and Mrs. McQuilken paused in the entry a moment to say:—­

“I guess you like cats.”

“I do, ma’am.  Oh, yes, very much.”

“That’s right.  I like to see children fond of animals.  Now, I’ve got a new kitty upstairs, a zebra kitty, that you’d be pleased with.  It’s a beauty, and such a tail!  Come up to my room and see it if you want to.  My room’s Number Five.  But don’t you come now; I shall be busy an hour and a half.  Remember, an hour and a half.”

Edith thanked her and ran to tell Kyzie what the “knitting-woman” had been saying.

“Go get your kodak,” said Kyzie.  “Nate Pollard is going to take us all out on an exploring expedition.  You know he has been in Castle Cliff a whole week, and knows the places.”

“First thing I want to see is that mine,” said Lucy, as they all met outside the hotel.

“The mine?” repeated Kyzie, and looked at Eddo.  “I’m afraid it isn’t quite safe to take little bits of people to such a place as that.  Do you think it is, Nate?”

“Rather risky,” replied Nate.

Eddo had caught the words, “little bits of people,” and his eyes opened wide.

“What does mine mean, Jimmum?”

“A great big hole, I guess.  See here, Eddo, let’s go in the house and find Maggie.”

“Yes,” chimed in Edith, “let’s go find Maggie.  There’s a beau-tiful picture book in mamma’s drawer.  You just ask Maggie and she’ll show you the picture of those nice little guinea-pigs.”

Though very young, Eddo was acute enough to see through this little manoeuvre.  It was not the first time the other children had tried to get him out of the way.  They wanted to go to see a charming “great big hole” somewhere, and they thought he would fall into it and get hurt.  They were always thinking such things—­so stupid of them!  They thought he used to run after “choo choos” and talk to them, when of course he never did it; ’twas some other little boy.