d and, taking turns, first one and then the other, they
began to lay the wall of their home.

It was slow work, for it must be thick and strong, and the place where
they gathered the plaster was not handy by, and it took a great great
many trips, their hods being so small.

At first, while the nest was shallow, only one could work at a time; and
if Petro came back with his plaster before Eve had patted the last of
hers into place, she would squeak at him in a fidgety though not fretful
voice, as if saying, "Now, don't get in my way and bother me, dear." So
he would have to fly about while he waited for her to go. The minute she
was ready to be off, he would be slipping into her place; and this time
she would give him a cosy little squeak of welcome, and he would reply,
with his mouth full of plaster, in a quick and friendly way, as if he
meant, "I'll build while you fetch more plaster, and we'd both better
hurry, don't you think?"

After worrying a bit about the best place to dump his hodful, he went to
work. He opened his beak and, in the most matter-of-fact way, pushed out
his lump of plaster with his tongue, on top of the nest wall. Then he
braced his body firmly in the nest and began to use his trowel, which
was his upper beak, pushing the fresh lump all smooth on the inside of
the nest.

Have you ever seen a dog poke with the top of his nose, until he got the
dirt heaped over a bone which he had buried? Well, that's much the way
Petro bunted his plaster smooth--rooted it into place with the top of
his closed beak. He got his face dirty doing it, too, even the pretty
pale feather crescent moon on his forehead. But that didn't matter.
Trowels, if they do useful work, have to get dirty doing it, and Petro
didn't stop because of that. If he had, his nest would have been as
rough on the inside as it was outside, where a humpy little lump showed
for each mouthful of plaster.

Although Eve and Petro did not fly off to the plaster pit together, they
did not go alone, for there was a whole colony of swallows building
under the eaves of that same barn; and while some of them stayed and
plastered, the rest flew forth for a fresh supply.

They knew the place, every one of them; and swiftly over the meadow and
over the marsh they flew, until they came to a pasture. There, near a
spring where the cows had trampled the ground until it was oozy and the
water stood in tiny pools in their hoof prints, the swallows stopped.
Th