David knew what shingles looked like when they came in bundles, but he wondered what the shiny, short boards were. But he didn't ask, because the horses were almost trotting, they were walking so fast, and the driver seemed to be pretty busy. He supposed that the shingles and things were going to the new house, and he watched the wagon until it stopped there. Then he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked off with it as fast as he could walk, and then he began to run, and his shovel and his hoe rattled so that you would have thought they would rattle out. The pretend child didn't go with David, for he had forgotten all about her. Sometimes the child was a girl and sometimes it was a boy; but it was a girl that morning. She was left in the gutter at the corner. And David didn't call his cat, and the cat stayed at the corner for a while, and first she looked at the pretend little girl and then she looked after David, and she didn't know which to go with. But at last she went running after David, and she caught up with him, and she ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air. When David got to the house, he found the wagon there, and the horses were standing still, and the driver was throwing off 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.