Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls when he was playing.
They were building a house in a field near that little boy's house; and, one morning, he had heard the sounds of hammers and of mallets all the time he was at breakfast.
So he hurried to get through, and he slipped down from his chair and took off his napkin and he wiped his mouth and he turned to his mother.
She was sitting still, smiling because he was in such a hurry.
"You seem to be in a good deal of a hurry," she said.
"Yes," he said, nodding, "I am. I think I had better go over to the new house."
"To see whether the men are doing their work right?" she asked.
"You see, I have to help the mortar man," he explained. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye, dear," she said. Then she kissed him. "Be very careful."
"Yes, I will."
Then he went out, and he got his cart, and he put his shovel and his hoe in it, and he called his cat; but no cat came. And he called her again, but she didn't come then.
So he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked over to the new house, dragging his cart behind him, with his shovel and his hoe rattling in the bottom of it.
The mortar man was still there, hoeing mortar for the bricklayers to use, for the chimneys weren't done yet.
"Hello," said the mortar man.
"Hello," the little boy said. "I came as soon as I could."
"Where's your kitty?" the mortar man asked. "You couldn't find her, could you? Well, look around behind you." The little boy looked around behind him.
He was standing with his back to the house, so that, when he looked behind him he saw the new house and the carpenters who were working at great beams which were on wooden horses that stood on the ground.
And he saw his cat, too. She was walking toward him, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
But the little boy was too much interested in what the carpenters were doing to pay much attention to his cat.
"What are those men doing?" he asked of the mortar man.
"The carpenters? They are cutting mortises in those girts. That is, little holes in those big beams. The ends of other beams will be made small enough to go in those holes, and they will hold the floor up."
"Mor—tar!" shouted one of the men who were building the chimney.
The mortar man hurried off with his hod of mortar, and the little boy wandered over to where the carpenters were.
His cat went, too, but he left his cart by the pile of sand.
There were two carpenters there, and they both looked up and smiled.
They had great thick chisels and heavy wooden mallets in their hands, and there was a big bit, or "borer," as the little boy called it, lying on the ground between them. And I don't know why "borer" isn't a better name for it.
There were some round holes in the beams which had been made by the borer, and the men were making those round holes square with the chisels.
One of the men had just finished a hole when the little boy came, and he went ahead to the next round hole, and he put the edge of the chisel carefully against the wood, and he struck it with the mallet.
Plack! Plack! Plack! shrieked the mallet on the chisel.
Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! the wood grunted, and it seemed to shiver when the mallet struck.
CUTTING A HOLE
Then there was a splintering noise and a part of the wood broke away.
Plack! Plack! Plack! screamed the mallet again.
The wood grunted again, but it was of no use, and another piece broke away.
And then the man hit the chisel again and another piece broke off, and the chisel came through on the other side of the beam.
And the carpenter drove the chisel through at the other side of the hole, in the same way; and what had been a round hole was a square one.
Then he laid the mallet down and took the chisel in both hands, and he leaned over the square hole and made the sides all smooth with the chisel.
Then he made a sort of sloping hole, a kind of a little square trench, and it went from the side of the beam into the square hole.
Then he put his tools down and looked at the little boy again and smiled.
"There!" he said. "That's done."
The little boy smiled back at him.
"Is it?" he said. "What goes in that hole? I could put my hand in it."
"It's not for little boys' hands," answered the carpenter. "The end of a short beam goes in there. I'll show you. We have to make places for the chimneys to come through and so people can go upstairs without knocking their heads. Did you ever think of that?"
The little boy shook his head, and he came nearer. "Show me."
So the carpenter went to a little pile of short beams; and he took one and brought it back.
And he turned the big beam on edge, and fitted the end of the little beam into the hole.
The end of the little beam had already been made small, so that it would go in.
"There," he said. "Now here, where I stand, will be the stairs for people to go up, and there will be that other big beam on the other side. We have to leave this big hole in the floor so that a man can go on the stairs without hitting his head, you know. Everywhere else will be a floor, except where the chimneys come through. Do you understand?"
The little boy nodded. He thought that he understood, although it was not very easy to understand.
And while he was trying to understand better, there came a voice behind him.
"Hello! I wondered where you were."
And he looked around and there was his friend the foreman, and the cat had gone to meet him and was coming back beside him, and she was looking up into the foreman's face, and her bushy tail was sticking straight up into the air.
"Hello," said the little boy; and he leaned back against the horse that the beam rested on.
"Your kitty," said the foreman, "came up here all by herself, and she followed me about."
The little boy laughed.
"She's a funny kitty," he said.
The foreman stooped down.
"I think you'd better tell me your name," he said. "I like to know the names of my friends."
"My name is David," the little boy answered.
"And mine is Jonathan," said the foreman quickly. "Think of that! Now, Davie, come with me and let's see how the other men are getting on."
So David put his little hand into the foreman's big one, and they started; and David saw some men putting up a great, tall beam on one of the corners.
Two men were holding it, and another man reached up as high as he could and nailed a board to it, and the other end of the board was fastened down low, so that the tall beam shouldn't fall over when the men let go.
"What are those men doing?" David asked. "That sticks up like my kitty's tail, doesn't it?"
"So it does," the foreman said. "There'll be more of them presently, sticking up all along every side."
"Will there? How many of those sticks will there be?"
"Oh, I don't know; more than fifty, I should think."
"A cat with fifty tails." And the little boy laughed. "Did you ever see a kitty with fifty tails?"
"All sticking straight up in the air!" said the foreman. "That would be funny. She'd look like a porcupine."
"What is a porcupine?" David asked. "Did I ever see one?"
"I guess not," the foreman answered. "Anyway, I never did. It's a little animal all covered with sharp things. It's just as if your kitty's fur was about three or four times as long as it is, and every hair was stiff and sharp. There's a great rattling as they walk, I'm told. The Indians used to sew the quills—the sharp things—on their soft leather slippers, because they looked pretty."
"Tell me some more about them," said David.
"I don't know any more. See, Davie, the men are putting up another stick."
So David watched the men put up that stick, and he forgot about the porcupine, which was what the foreman wanted.
And then he watched them put up another, and then another.
"They look as if they were the bones of the house," he said.
"So they do, Davie," the foreman said, "and so they are. And the whole frame, before it's boarded in—before any boards are nailed on—looks like the skeleton of a house, and so it is. They'll have pretty near the whole frame up by the time you eat your supper; or to-morrow morning, at any rate. Then you look and see. It's much the same way that your body's made: your ribs and the other bones are the frame, and inside you there are a lot of rooms, and it's all covered with soft skin instead of boards."
"Am I? What are my ribs?"
"These bones." And the foreman stooped and ran his finger quickly down David's ribs, and David shrieked with laughter.
"Tickles," said David. "Show me my ribs again."
"It isn't good for little boys to be tickled too much," said the foreman. "Now we'll go over to the sand-pile for a while. I don't want to take you into the house until they get the frame all up and some floors down. It isn't safe."
So they turned around and went to the sand-pile, and the foreman stayed there a little while and played in the sand.
Then he had to go away; and the mortar man had gone away, and nobody was there but David and his cat.
And David thought that he would help the mortar man, so he filled his cart with sand and dragged it over to the mortar box and shoveled it in.
Then he took up the handle of his cart, and he called his cat, and he walked along to his house, dragging his cart.
And his shovel rattled in the bottom of it, and his cat ran on before him.
But he had forgotten his hoe. It was in the pile of sand.
And that's all of this story.
Once upon a time there was a little boy and he was almost five years old. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls when he was playing. And his name was David.
They were building a house in a field near David's house; and, one morning, he heard a curious sound, and he wondered what they were doing, and he asked his mother.
"Mother," he said, "what are they doing? What are they? It sounds as if they were pickaxing the dirt."
His mother laughed. "Well," she answered, "perhaps they are. I don't know what they are doing. I think you'll have to go and see."
"Think I'll have to go and see," David repeated; "but I'll have my breakfast first."
So he had his breakfast first, and he hurried a little because he wanted to know what the noise was.
And when he was through his breakfast he took off his napkin and slipped down from his chair and went around to kiss his mother.
His father had gone off to town in the early train.
"Good-bye," said David.
"Good-bye, dear," said his mother. "Be very careful."
He nodded. "Yes, I will." He was going out, but he stopped. "I don't hear it now, mother. I don't hear the noise. Do you suppose they've stopped doing it?"
"If you go right along over there, I think you'll find out about it."
So the little boy went out, and he picked up his shovel, but he couldn't find his hoe.
And he put his shovel into his cart, and took up the handle of the cart, and his cat came running, and he went toward the new house, dragging his cart behind him with his shovel rattling in the bottom of it. His cat ran on ahead.
Long before he got as far as the house, he saw some men's heads bob up in the middle of the road; heads without any bodies to them.
And he went nearer, and he saw that the men were in a trench that they had dug in the road, as far as the new house.
Some long iron pipes were in the gutter. The pipes were big enough for his kitty to crawl through.
He wanted to ask somebody about them, but there was nobody there except the two men in the trench, so he walked along until he came to the mortar box.
The mortar man wasn't there. He had gone into the house with a hod of mortar.
So David looked all about for somebody.
He saw the pile of sand with his hoe sticking out of it, but he didn't pay any attention to it, for he wasn't thinking about hoes then.
And he saw the bones of the house almost all up, so that they made a pretty good skeleton, and the carpenters were putting up the rafters: the beams that hold up the roof.
And other carpenters had just begun nailing boards on to the outside of the up-and-down beams, and there was a great noise of hammering.
At last he saw the foreman.
"Hello!" David called.
There was such a noise, with the carpenters all hammering, that the foreman didn't hear him.
"Hello!" called David again, louder.
Still the foreman didn't hear.
"Hello!" David shouted as loud as he could shout. "Hello, Jonathan!"
The foreman heard, that time, and he looked around and laughed.
"Ho, Davie!" he said in a big round voice. "Just wait a minute and I'll be down there."
So David waited a minute, then two, then five minutes, and the foreman came. Then David asked his question.
"What are the men doing in the road?"
"They're digging a trench. When they get it done, they'll lay water pipes in it. And the water will come all the way from the reservoir on the hill, and it will go through pipes that are already laid under the streets, and it will come to this street, and it will turn into this street and go along, and some will go into your house, and some will keep on to this house and go in through a pipe that will be under the ground just the other side of the sand-pile.
"That pipe will go through the cellar wall, and to all the faucets in the house, so that when the little boy who will live here wants to wash his hands or take a bath, he will turn a faucet and the water will come running. There, now."
"Oh," said David, "will a little boy live here?"
"I don't know who will live here, Davie," the foreman answered. "There most generally is a little boy or so in any family that lives in this town."
"Oh," said David; and he nodded his head, and he saw a faucet that was nailed to a board.
And the faucet was on the end of a pipe which stuck up from the ground near the mortar box.
"Why," he said, "there's a faucet, and water will come. I've seen the mortar man get it there."
"Yes," said the foreman. "We had to have water to use. It comes through this pipe that lies on top of the ground all the way to your house. See?"
And the foreman showed David the pipe. It was hidden by the long grass.
"They're going to lay the pipes now, Davie. Do you want to see them do it?"
So David put his little hand into the foreman's big one, and they went together to where the men were.
The men had got up out of the trench, and they were going to take up one of the iron pipes that lay in the gutter.
Just as they began to lift it, out of one end of it popped David's kitty. She scurried around and popped into the end of another pipe, and all the men laughed.
"Funny kitty," said David.
Then the men took hold of the pipe that the cat had been in at first, and they lifted it, one at each end, and they carried it and put it down beside the trench.
OUT POPPED DAVID'S KITTY
Then they got into the trench again, and they took hold of the pipe and lowered it to the bottom.
David couldn't see what the men were doing then, and he went to the edge of the trench and squatted there and watched.
He saw the end of a pipe sticking out of the ground into the trench. It looked as if it had been in the ground a long time.
"What is that?" he asked the foreman.
The foreman said it was the end of the old pipe, and there was a place near his house where they could put a long iron thing into the ground, down as far as the pipes, and turn it and let the water into this pipe. The long iron thing was like a clock-key.
"And Davie," he said, "you see that one end of each pipe flares out bigger than the other end. The men put the small end of one pipe into the flaring end of the next. You'll see."
So David looked and the men fitted the small end of the new pipe into the flaring end of the old one, and they blocked the new pipe up with dirt and stones until it was just right.
Then one of the men took some things that were in the trench. All that David saw was what looked like some old frazzled-out rope, and he laid the things he had taken up around the new pipe in the joint, and he hammered them in tight with a kind of a dull chisel. That was so that the water shouldn't leak through.
When the men had the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were heavy and it seemed to be all moist like mud.
And the man took this snaky, wavy thing, and he wrapped it around the pipe, and he drove it into the joint until it looked like a part of the pipe.
Then he felt it all over carefully, and he stood up and looked at it.
And he made up his mind that it was all right, and the other man began to shovel dirt down into the trench, and they punched the dirt until it was all hard under the pipe and at the sides.
Then they went to the gutter and picked up another pipe.
The foreman couldn't wait any longer.
"I've got to go now, Davie."
"Where have you got to go?" David asked. "Can I go with you?"
"I've got to go into the house. I can't take you in there yet. I'm afraid you'd get hurt. In a day or two you can go in."
David nodded. He was thinking about those pipes.
"Will the men keep on putting those pipes together until they come to the house?" he asked. "And how will they get the pipe into the house? They'll have to put it through a window."
"No," the foreman answered, "they won't have to put it through a window. They'll lay the pipes straight past the house, and they'll plug up the end until there are some more houses built on this road.
"Then they'll fit a little pipe into the side of the big pipe and run it through a hole in the cellar wall.
"The little pipe is not much bigger than that pipe that the faucet is on, over by the mortar box. What'll you do now, Davie?—play in the sand?"
David nodded again. "Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye." And the foreman went into the house.
And David dug in the sand for a while, and then he looked for his cat, but he didn't see her; so he put his shovel and his hoe into the cart, and walked off, dragging the cart, with the shovel and the hoe rattling in the bottom of it.
And when he got to the pipes, the cat popped out of the end of one of them, and she ran ahead of David, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air, and David walked along to his house.
And that's all.
Once upon a time there was a little boy, and he was almost five years old, and his name was David. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls when he was playing.
One day he wandered up to the corner of the road that he lived on.
He wasn't allowed to go beyond that corner, and his mother didn't like to have him go so far as the corner.
But he was pretending, and he didn't know how far he had come.
He played in the gravel of the gutter for a long time, and he was talking nearly all the time.
His cat was there, taking little runs away, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air. Then she would lie down on her back and play with the air, and then she always jumped up in a great hurry and ran back to David and rubbed against him.
But David wasn't talking to his cat, and he wasn't talking to himself.
He was talking to the pretend child who was his playmate and who had come there holding to the other handle of his cart and helping him drag it.
And he was so busy that he didn't notice the great wagon that was just about to turn the corner.
The driver called to him.
"Hey, little boy! Don't get run over."
David scrambled up on the sidewalk before he even looked, for he remembered to be careful.
Then he looked, and he saw a big wagon that was drawn by two horses, and the wagon was loaded with short, shiny boards, tied together in bundles, and on top of the bundles of short, shiny boards were bundles of shingles, a great many of them.
David knew what shingles looked like when they came in bundles, but he wondered what the shiny, short boards were.
But he didn't ask, because the horses were almost trotting, they were walking so fast, and the driver seemed to be pretty busy.
He supposed that the shingles and things were going to the new house, and he watched the wagon until it stopped there.
Then he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked off with it as fast as he could walk, and then he began to run, and his shovel and his hoe rattled so that you would have thought they would rattle out.
The pretend child didn't go with David, for he had forgotten all about her.
Sometimes the child was a girl and sometimes it was a boy; but it was a girl that morning. She was left in the gutter at the corner.
And David didn't call his cat, and the cat stayed at the corner for a while, and first she looked at the pretend little girl and then she looked after David, and she didn't know which to go with.
But at last she went running after David, and she caught up with him, and she ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.
When David got to the house, he found the wagon there, and the horses were standing still, and the driver was throwing off the bundles of shingles and another man was piling them up.
They had got almost to the shiny, short boards.
And the foreman was there, and he was putting something down with a very short pencil in a little old book.
"Hello," said David. "What are—"
But the foreman interrupted him.
"Just wait a minute, Davie, until I get these checked up."
So David waited a long time, but the wagon was unloaded at last, and the little book put in the foreman's pocket.
"Now, Davie," the foreman said, "what was it that you were asking me?"
"I was asking what are these," said David, putting his hand on a bundle of the shiny boards.
"Those are clapboards, Davie."
The foreman stooped down and pointed to the house.
"You see they have begun to put them on the outside of the walls of the house, but we had to have some more. You see that one edge of a clapboard is thin and the other edge is thick."
He pulled one of the clapboards from a bundle and showed David.
"The thick edges go over the thin edges, very much like shingles, and they keep the rain and the wind out. You know about shingles?"
David nodded doubtfully.
"I don't know whether I do or not."
"Well," the foreman said, "you ought to know about them. Those two men have just begun to shingle the piazza roof. If you can wait a few minutes, I'll take you up there. You aren't very busy this morning, are you?"
David smiled and shook his head.
The foreman smiled too.
"You wait right here, and I'll come and get you pretty soon."
So David waited, and while he was waiting he watched the men putting on clapboards.
They had begun at the top and had got about halfway down that side.
The men were putting the clapboards on outside of that red paper.
A man had a pile of clapboards beside him, and he took one up and he lifted the edge of the one above, and he tucked the thin edge of the clapboard that he held in his hand under the edge that he had lifted; and he gave it little taps with his hammer until it was in the right place, and then he drove fine nails through the thick edge that he had lifted, and through the thin edge of the clapboard beneath, and into the wall of the house.
Then he took up another clapboard and put it close up to the one that he had just fastened, with its thin edge tucked under the thick edge of the one above.
The men put on clapboards very fast, and David was so interested in seeing them do it that he forgot that the foreman had not come back for him.
He had gone up nearer, so as to see just how the clapboards went on, when he heard the foreman's voice behind him.
"Well, Davie," said the foreman, "do you think you could put on clapboards as fast as that?"
David shook his head.
"No, I couldn't."
"Perhaps not. But come on, and we'll see what you can do with shingles."
And the foreman took David's small hand in his big one, and they went to where a ladder stood leaning against the edge of the piazza roof.
A little way below the edge of the roof there was a rough sort of a platform, made of two boards laid on some other boards that were nailed to the posts of the piazza and to long sticks which went up and down and had their ends resting on the ground.
This was what the carpenters called a staging or scaffolding, and when they got through their work, they would take it down.
"Now, Davie," said the foreman, "you take hold of the rungs and climb up. It's a pretty long stretch for little legs, but I'll hold you, and I won't let you fall. Don't look down. Look up."
So David took hold of a rung and stretched his leg as high as it would go, and he managed to get his foot on the first rung.
Then he pulled himself up and reached up with one hand and took hold of the next rung; and then he put his other hand up, and he stretched his leg up as high as it would go, and he stepped up another rung.
The rungs of a ladder are the little round sticks that go across that you put your feet on.
David climbed very slowly, and he was rather scared at first; but he felt the foreman's arm around him, and the foreman kept just behind him, so that he stopped being scared.
And he climbed a little faster, and he came to the platform.
"Now, what shall I do?" he asked.
"Now you hold your breath," the foreman said, "and I'll put you over on to the staging."
So Davie held his breath and one of the shingle men came and held him by the arms when the foreman had set him down upon the boards.
Then the foreman stepped upon the staging and put his arm around David again.
"There!" said the foreman. "You've climbed your first ladder. Now we'll see about the shingling."
There was a whole bundle of shingles on the staging, and another bundle that had been opened, and the shingle men had thrown a good many of these shingles up on the roof, so that they would be handy.
And David saw that there were three rows of shingles on already, and that a string was stretched tight across the last row; and the string was chalky-looking, and blue.
"They're just going to mark another row," the foreman said. "You watch."
Then one of the shingle men lifted the stretched string between his thumb and his forefinger, and he let it go, and it snapped down hard upon the shingles.
And they took the string away, and there was a blue line all along the row of shingles.
"What is that?" David asked.
"Chalk, Davie. They put chalk on the string by rubbing a lump of chalk on it. That line shows where the edge of the next row of shingles goes.
"And they lay the shingles on so that each crack in the row beneath is covered. The shingles are different widths, you see, and they can always find one that fits up close to the next one and covers a crack.
"If the cracks were not covered, the rain would get through and the roof would leak.
"Now let's see if you can lay shingles. Pick out one that you think will be right to cover the crack in the row beneath, and lay it down close up to the last one and with its thick edge to that blue line."
David was rather excited at the thought that he was to lay the shingles.
"Shall I?" he asked.
The foreman nodded, and he pointed to a shingle.
"Try that one."
So David took the one that the foreman pointed at, and he laid it down as well as he could, close up to the last one which the shingle man had put on, and with its thick edge at the blue line.
It took him some time, because he had never laid shingles before; but the shingle man had only to change it a tiny bit, and then he drove in two nails about halfway up toward the thin edge.
And David took another shingle which the foreman pointed at, and he fitted it in its place a little more quickly, and the shingle man didn't have to change that one at all, but drove the nails with hardly more than two blows of his hammer.
So David kept on laying shingles, and the shingle man nailed them.
At first the foreman pointed to the right shingles; but, after a while, he didn't point, but David chose them himself.
And they finished that row, and they began the next.
"I'm afraid, Davie," the foreman said, "that we'll have to go down now. Aren't you ready to go?"
David was getting a little bit tired, for the shingle man nailed his shingles before he could wink, and he felt hurried all the time.
So he said that he was ready, and the foreman took him under his arm and carried him down the ladder that way.
"Good-bye," he called to the shingle menas he was going down.
"Good-bye," the shingle men called to David. "We're much obliged."
"You're welcome," David called back to the shingle men.
Then he was set down on the ground, and he was rather glad to feel the ground again.
And his cat came running, with her bushy tail straight up in the air, and David started off.
"Where are you going so fast?" the foreman asked.
David stopped for a moment.
"I've got to go home now."
"To tell your mother that you've been shingling?"
David nodded, and he smiled shyly.
"Well, good-bye, Davie," the foreman said.
"Good-bye," said David.
And he turned again and ran to his cart, and he took up the handle.
And he started walking as fast as he could, dragging his cart, with his shovel and his hoe rattling in the bottom, and his cat ran on ahead; and she ran right up the front steps and in at the door, and David came after.
But he left his cart in the path.
And that's all of the shingle story.