“But how can she get it out, how?” asked Jewel keenly interested.  “The brooks are all running somewhere, but the pond doesn’t.  How can she dip it out?  It would take Summer’s hottest sun a year!”

“Yes, indeed, Nature is too clever to try that.  The winds are her servants, you know, and they understand their business perfectly; so when she says ‘That pond needs to be cleaned out,’ they merely get up a storm some night after everybody’s gone to bed.  The people have seen the pond fine and full when the sun went down.  All that night the wind howls and the windows rattle and the trees bend and switch around; and if those in the farmhouse, instead of being in bed, were over there on the beach,” the speaker waved his hand toward the shining white sand, distant, but in plain sight, “they might see countless billows working for dear life to dig a trench through the hard sand.  The wind sends one tremendous wave after another to help them, and as a great roller breaks and recedes, all the little crested waves scrabble with might and main, pulling at the softened sand, until, after hours of this labor, the cut is made completely through from sea to pond.”

Mr. Evringham looked down and met the unwinking gaze fixed upon him.  “Then why—­why,” asked Jewel, “when the big rollers keep coming, doesn’t the pond get filled fuller than ever?”

The broker lifted his forefinger toward his face with a long drawn “Ah-h!  Nature is much too clever for that.  She may not have gone to college, but she understands engineering, all the same.  All this is accomplished just at the right moment for the outgoing tide to pull at the pond with a mighty hand.  Well,”—­pausing dramatically,—­“you can imagine what happens when the deep cut is finished.”

“Does the pond have to go, grandpa?”

“It just does, and in a hurry!”

“Is it sorry, do you think?” asked Jewel doubtfully.

“We-ell, I don’t know that I ever thought of that side of it; but you can imagine the feelings of the people in the farmhouse, who went to bed beside the ripples of a smiling little lake, and woke to find themselves near a great empty bog.”

Jewel thought and sighed deeply.  “Well,” she said, at last, “I hope Nature will wait till we’re gone.  I love this pond.”

“Indeed I hope so, too.  There wouldn’t be any pleasant side to it.”

Jewel’s thoughtful face brightened.  “Except for the little fishes and water-creatures that would rush out to sea.  It’s fun for them.  Mustn’t they be surprised when that happens, grandpa?”

“I should think so!  Do you suppose the wind gives them any warning, or any time to pack?”

Jewel laughed.  “I don’t know; but just think of rushing out into those great breakers, when you don’t expect it, right from living so quietly in the pond!”

“H’m.  A good deal like going straight from Bel-Air Park to Wall Street, I should think.”