e house,
to paint the parts that had to be painted in there; and some of the
painters got ready to paint the outside of the house.

And they took thick pieces of board, and bored a hole in the middle,
and they nailed those pieces of board on the roof, near the edge.

And they put the great enormous hooks up there, with the pointed ends
in the holes in the boards, and the other ends hanging over the edge
of the roof, over the gutter and the eaves.

The ends of the hooks which hung over had pulleys in them, and through
the pulleys ran long ropes which hung down to the ground.

And the painters fastened the end of one of the ropes to one end of a
ladder, and the end of another rope to the other end of the ladder.

Then they put some of the painty boards along over the rungs, so that
the men shouldn't fall through or drop their pots of paint through,
and they had made a sort of a staging which could be highered or
lowered by the ropes.

And they tried the ropes, to see that it was all right, and two
painters got on it, with their pots of paint and their brushes and
everything they needed.

And one man sat at each end, and they pulled on the ropes, and hoisted
the staging, with themselves sitting on it, up off the ground.

And the staging, with the two men on it, and their pots of paint, went
slowly higher and higher, until it was as high as it could go, and the
men could reach the highest board that they had to paint.

Then they fastened the ropes carefully, and they stirred up the paint,
and they took up the brushes and they dipped the brushes in the paint,
and they knocked them gently against the side of the paint-pot, _plop_,
_plop_, _plop_, and they began to move them quickly over the boards,
_swish_, _swish_, _swish_, first one side of the brush, and then back
again on the other side.

And the first thing you knew they had all those boards painted, and
they had to lower the staging so that they could reach the boards
lower down.

"Hello!" called a little clear voice, and the painters looked down.

The foreman was standing there, watching the painters; and he looked,
and there was David, all dressed in his go-to-town clothes.

And the foreman looked again, and there was David's mother, standing
by her gate and waiting for David.

And she had on her go-to-town clothes, too.

"Hello, Davie," the foreman called. "You're all dressed up, aren't
you? You'd better go and get into your overalls, quick, and the