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THE CLEARING-UP 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.

They had been building a new house in the field next to David's house,
and it was all done. Even the last coat of paint was dry.

David knew, because he had tried it with his finger to see. He had
tried it three times, and the first two times it wasn't dry, but the
last time it was.

And the carpenters had gone, and the painters had gone, but they had
left great messes and piles of stuff that had been swept out of the
house, and heaps of the sawed-off ends of boards, and some good boards,
and piles of broken laths and plaster and the little pieces that they
had sawed off the laths, and some broken saw-horses, and a lot of
other rubbish.

One morning David heard the rattle of a wagon; and he looked and saw a
wagon stop at the new house, and he saw the nice foreman that he knew,
and there were two other men.

And the men jumped out, and the foreman jumped out, and David hurried
to go over there. He hurried so fast that he forgot to take his cart,
and he forgot to call his cat, but his cat came just the same, and she
ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air.

And when the foreman saw the cat, he knew that David couldn't be far
off, and he looked up and he saw him.

"Hello, Davie," he said. "I'm glad to see you."

"Hello," David said. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to sort of clear up the place, Davie. Don't you think it
needs it? And I'm going to have all this rubbish carried off or burned
up."

David nodded, but he didn't say anything; and he reached up, and he
put his little hand into the foreman's big one.

Then the two men who had come with the foreman began to pick out the
boards that were good.

There were some great heavy planks which were covered with plaster and
spattered with paint, but they were good planks and could be used
again.

The men took these planks, one man at each end, and they brought them
to the wagon and they put them in.

When they had brought all the planks, they separated the long boards
from the little short ends of boards, and they brought the long boards
to the wagon and they put them o