ff 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 side of the house was all covered with red stuff which looked
something like cloth and something like thick paper. It was paper, and
it rippled and waved in the wind.

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, wit