The next Saturday was Becky Thatcher’s birthday, and all Becky’s friends were very excited.
‘It’s going to be a wonderful day,’ Becky told Tom. ‘We’re going to have a picnic down the river, and after that we can visit McDougal’s Cave.’
So in the morning a big boat took Becky, Tom and all their friends down the river. There were some older children on the boat too, but all the mothers and fathers stayed at home. Picnics are better without them!
And it was a very happy, noisy picnic.
After the picnic the children took out their candles and ran up the hill to the cave. The mouth of the cave was dark, and some of the children were afraid at first. But caves are exciting, so in the end everybody went in.
McDougal’s Cave was very, very big, with hundreds of tunnels and rooms. The tunnels went up, down and into the hill for miles. You could walk for days in McDougal’s Cave. Nobody knew all the cave, but many people knew the tunnels near the door. You could play all day in these tunnels. Tom, of course, knew them well. For hours the children walked and ran through the cave, up and down the tunnels, in and out of the rooms. In the evening they came out and walked down the hill to the boat, tired but happy.
