"Not that way," the painter said. "I"ll show you."
Then he took hold of David"s wrist, but he left the brush in David"s hand, and he moved it the way it ought to go, and he swept up all the little rivers of paint and all the little drips, and spread it smoothly over the clapboard.
"There!" said the painter. "Now, do you see?"
David nodded, and he tried again.
This time he did better, but the paint was all gone from the brush, and he held it out to the painter for more.
So the painter dipped it again, and David took it, and painted some more.
And each time he did better than he had done the last time, and he hitched along on the staging, and that clapboard was all painted before he knew it.
And David sighed and started to get up on his feet.
But the other painter called to him.
"Hey, David!" he called. "Aren"t you going to do any painting for me?
That isn"t fair. You come over and do a board for me."
David smiled with pleasure. "Yes, I will," he said.
So he crawled on his hands and knees along the staging, and the foreman walked along on the ground beside him.
And he painted a clapboard for that other painter, but a great drop of the paint got on the leg of his overalls.
"Oh," he said, "I got some paint on my overalls."
"Gracious!" said the painter. "That"s nothing. Look at my overalls."
The painter"s overalls were made of strong white cloth, and they were all splashed up with paint, all colors. But he had painted a great deal more than David had.
So David finished the clapboard, and then he got up on his feet, and the foreman took him and lifted him down to the ground.
"Thank you," said the painter.
"Thank you," said the other painter.
"You"re welcome," David said. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said both the painters.
And David began to run to his cart.
"Good-bye, Davie," the foreman said.
David stopped a moment and looked around.
"Good-bye," he said.
Then his cat came running to meet him, and he grabbed up the handle of his cart, and he kept on running, dragging his cart, and his shovel and his hoe rattled away like everything in the bottom of it.
And when he got to his house, he didn"t stop running, but just dropped the handle of the cart, and he climbed up the steps as fast as he could and ran into the house.
"Mother," he called, "I painted two boards and I got some paint on my overalls. But you ought to see the painter"s overalls. They"re _awful_ painty."
And that"s all.
IX
THE TREE-MEN STORY
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.
Behind David"s house were some thin woods. And in those woods were oak trees, several kinds, but he didn"t know the difference between the kinds.
And there were cedar trees and chestnut trees and birch trees of three kinds; and there were white pine trees and pitch pine trees, and the pitch pine trees were sticky all over.
David knew the pitch pine trees, because he had got his clothes all covered with their stickiness.
And there were a few great sycamore trees, and some ash trees, and some beech trees, and a lot of other kinds that I can"t remember the names of.
All summer there were lots of birds in these woods and about the edge of them; and in the winter, when all those summer birds had gone away, other birds came.
And four blue jays stayed there all the year, and the crows stayed, of course, but they didn"t live in those woods especially.
And there were chickadees and juncos, which are one kind of s...o...b..rd; and there were a lot of little birds which looked like sparrows, and there were red-polled linnets, and occasionally a flock of cedar-birds would cover the cedars like gray snowflakes, and once David"s mother called him to come quick and see the pine grosbeaks.
And when David came, he saw a great flock of birds which looked gray, but three of them had the most beautiful rose-colored feathers on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and shoulders and heads, making them look as if they had tied rose-colored ap.r.o.ns about their necks. David watched them until they flew away.
All these birds were very busy feeding on the seeds of weeds or the berries of the trees, and some of them dug insects out of the bark.
And there were gray squirrels which raced along the branches of the trees, and jumped from one branch to another, and poked about on the ground and opened the chestnut-burs which had just fallen from the trees, and ate the chestnuts, or scampered over the roof just above David"s head, and made a great racket.
They were great fat fellows with warm, thick fur, not much like the squirrels on Boston Common, but they got almost as tame with David, although he never could get quite near enough to one to pat it. That was better, for the squirrel might have bitten David.
David used to try to get near them, but he always told his cat to stay at home when he was going after them, for the squirrels were afraid of his cat.
One morning in the fall David had gone after the squirrels. There were a great many squirrels about, for the chestnuts had begun to fall, and the squirrels were very busy.
And David had got farther and farther from his house, but he was where he could see the road.
And he heard the rattle of a wagon, and he looked and saw a very spick-and-span new wagon, painted red, with yellow and black stripes on it, and the wheels were flashing in the sun as they turned.