Read "Jibby Jones" by Ellis Parker Butler online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The night after we had chased the Tough Customer and the Rat from Birch Island we had a meeting of the Land Pirate's Treasure-Hunting and Exploration Company in the shaft-house of the Five Friends' Worm Mine. The Worm Mine was something we had started a few days earlier.
Everybody knows it is hardly worth while going fishing unless you have worms or minnows for bait. Minnows are the best bait, but they are hard to get and harder to keep, so nearly everybody uses worms. When everything is moist, you can dig worms almost anywhere on the island, but, when a dry spell comes on, the ground gets drier and drier, and the worms go down so deep that you can dig for an hour out back of the cottages and not get a worm. Then there is only one place on the island where you can get worms. That is in what we all called Mosquito Hollow. This year the worms went deep, and we had to try Mosquito Hollow for them.