The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode by Eleanor Estes

hidey hole. Vines had grown thicker since we started Operation'T. (for tunnel) nearly two weeks ago. We were even more hidden now than then.
    "I can't wait for the day when we'll find the main tunnel and then the cutoff one to the office under J.I.'s house," I said. I laughed. "We'll come out of it, find the trap door, or whatever kind of door it is, into her cellar, come up her cellar steps, smell the sausage from
that
side the kitchen door (we'll try to make it on a Sunday when she always has sausage), and say softly, not to scare her, 'Jane! Let us in. You went and locked the cellar door.' Hear her say, 'Why, Copin! Tornid! How'd you get down in my cellar when it's locked up tight?'
    "Then I'd say, 'Stage 1 of Operation'T. has been finished. Next stage, finding where the passage from your cellar leads ... if it goes further than here ... connects up with small passageways to different houses ... is in the works.' Then, I'd invite her down to take a look around ... take a little jaunt to where we began ... right here at TRATS . So, back to work, ya lazy lug. The tools are OK. So, chip on, Torny, old boy, old boy, old boy. On to the tunnel! This tunnel exists all right. It's no pipe dream..."
    "What's that ... a pipe dream?" said Tornid.
    "You don't know what a pipe dream is?" I said.
    "Oh, yeah ... sure," said Tornid. "You mean
pipe
dream, new way of getting into tunnels.... You use a pipe to do it."
    "Hey," I said. "Your ESP might have sent you a message right then. You might have something there!"
    "I might?" Tornid's eyes shone. He was proud to have "something."
    "Maybe," I said, and looked at him piercingly through my nonshatterable glasses.
    "It's best not to let people—Tornid—know when they—he—have—has hit on something, not to make them—him—conceited. Jane Ives works the other way around. She is all for praising. The least glimmer of an idea—"Great, great," she says even before it all gets out of your mouth (it's because she has ESP). Even some corny idea of LLIB's or one of the C. girls..."Great! Great!" she says.
    In Tornid's and my combine it wouldn't work for me to throw out praise. I have to be the one with the ideas. The combine just would not work otherwise. You can't have an eight-year-old having the ideas. Helper to carry out ideas—mine—OK. Have the ideas—his—no!
    Well ... Tornid ... he knows it anyway when the idea he passes along to me is a good one because I mull over it. And that's all he cares about ... he doesn't have to be told, "Great, great." He is an anonymous idea getter and giver. Of course, like with pipe dream, Tornid doesn't always know he has an idea. But I sure know one when I hear one. So I climbed out of the hidey hole a minute, and I looked at and studied the round pipe with the flat top on it that the moms set their coffee mugs on while they watch the baby, chew the fat, make each other laugh. I couldn't understand why it was there unless it was a pipe, a vent—perhaps—that was used to air out the tunnel. I marked it T.V. (Tunnel Vent). This would throw people—the C. girls—off the track because they—everyone—thinks those letters stand for television, not tunnel vent. But from up here there was no way of telling if this theory was right. We had to get down to prove it.
    So, back into the hidey hole again then, me—Copin Nubsy Carroll—and Tornid—Tornid Nubsy Fabian—ready to probe the secret of the tunnel. We chipped away at the brick wall on the left-hand side of the hidey hole. It was hard work and it was hot work. In case you wonder what it was doing outside, it was being hot. We worked fast because I never know when my mom will blast the cow horn blast—she can blow various notes on it, for she is clever in the use of it—and blast me home.
    "She always blows it at the worst time. Doesn't she—my mom—always blow the cow horn at the wrong time?" I asked Tornid.

    "I