“Gotta get ’em all, or somebody else ’ll get onto it, and take ’em,” declared Harry when he came in for a drink, his face and hands black and a happy, manly look around his mouth and eyes. It was ten o’clock when the last load was dumped, by the light of all the lamps in the house brought out into the yard, and it was more than an hour later before the boys got back from returning the truck to its owner. They were tired and dirty almost beyond recognition, but happier than they had been for many a day, and glad of the bit of a feast which their sister had set out for them, and of the hot baths. “Well, if we don’t have a fireplace now, it won’t be my fault!” declared Harry, mopping a warm red face with a handkerchief that had seen better days. “Gee! We certainly did work. Carey can work, too, when he tries, I’ll say”; and there was a note of admiration in his voice for his elder brother, which was not missed by either the brother or the watching sisters. Everybody slept well that night, and they were all so weary that they came near to oversleeping next morning. It was after the children had gone to school and Carey was off getting lime and sand and cement for his work that Cornelia went out into the back yard to hang up the curtains which she had just washed, and, turning away from the line, she encountered a pair of curious eyes under the ruffle of a gay calico boudoir-cap whose owner was standing on the neighboring back porch, the one to the left, where Louise had said the carpenter lived. “Good morning!” said the other woman briskly, as if she had a perfect right to be intimate. “You all ain’t agoing to build, are you? I see all them stone come last night, and I couldn’t make out what in life you all was going to do with ’em, lessen you was goin’ to pull down and build out.” Cornelia had a foolish little hesitancy in responding to this lively overture, for her instinct was to look down upon people who lived in so mean a neighborhood; but she reflected quickly that she was living there herself, and perhaps these people didn’t like it any better than she did. Why should she look down upon them? So she looked up with a pleasant smile, if a trifle belated. “Oh, good morning. No, we’re only going to have a fireplace. I wish we were going to build; the house isn’t arranged at all the way I should like it, and it’s such fun to have things made the way you want them, don’t you think?” “Yes,” said the neighbor, eying her curiously. “I s’pose it is. I never have tried it. My husband’s a carpenter, and of course he don’t have time to make things for me. It’s like the shoemaker’s children goin’ barefoot, as the sayin’ is. I was going to say that, if you all was buildin’, my husband, being a carpenter, might be handy for you. He takes contracts sometimes.”