"She's been quite nice nearly all the while," said Maisie; "I wish she had stopped longer." She spoke sincerely, for just now Dennis was so absorbed in his jackdaws' house that she felt she should miss Philippa and be rather dull. "Can't I help you?" she asked, as she followed him to the corner where the jackdaws' house was being put up. It was not much to look at yet, but there were some upright posts, and a roll of wire netting, and some thin lathes of wood and a good deal of sawdust about, so that it had a business air. "Well, you see," said Dennis, "girls always hurt their fingers with tools, but perhaps you shall try to-morrow. It's too late now. Doesn't it seem a waste, when you're doing something you like, to go to bed and sleep all night?" "But if you didn't," said Maisie, "you couldn't go on with it, because it's all dark." "I don't know that," said Dennis; "Tuvvy says it's light all night part of the summer.--There's the tea-bell; we must go in." "I shouldn't like to be out in the night," said Maisie, with a little shiver, as the children ran towards the house, "when everything's in bed, and it's all so quiet and still." "Everything isn't in bed," said Dennis. "There's owls, and glow-worms, and bats, and--" "But they're none of them very _nice_ things to be with," said Maisie hesitatingly; "and then there are bad people out at night, who get into houses and steal things, as they did at Upwell, don't you remember?" "Oh, you mean thieves," said Dennis; "but as far as they go, it's better to be out of doors than in the house. The policemen are out all night as well as the thieves, so it wouldn't matter a bit." "Well, you won't forget," said Maisie, quitting the subject of thieves, which was an unpleasant one to her, "that to-morrow morning I'm to help you with the jackdaws' house." Dennis did not forget, and the following day Maisie was supplied with a hammer, and began her work with great zeal, but alas! two minutes had not passed before the heavy hammer came crashing down on her chubby fingers instead of on the nail she was holding. It was a dreadful moment, not only because of the pain, which was severe, but because she felt that it stamped her inferiority as a girl for ever. She looked piteously up at Dennis with her fingers in her mouth, and her eyes full of tears. "There!" he began tauntingly, but seeing Maisie's round face quiver with pain, he stopped, threw down his tools, and knelt beside her on the grass. "Does it hurt much?" he said. "Come in to Aunt Katharine."