David dropped the handle of his cart, and ran around to the back of the house and got an old grocery box that he used to play with. He kept all his things at the back of the house: old broken grocery boxes and old tin cans and rows of bottles, some of them filled with water and some filled with thin mud and some empty, and nails and pieces of iron and sticks; but not his toys. And David dragged the old grocery box around to the front, and put it opposite the end of a step. Not all of the boards which had been nailed on for a cover were taken off, so that the inside of the box was hard to get at, and it was rather dark. Then he picked up two short sticks and put them on the step. David hurried to do all these things, and when he had them done, he hurried into the house and into the dining-room, and he climbed up in a chair and took a short candle out of one of the candlesticks which they used on the table. Then he pushed the chair over near where the matches were, and he climbed up again and got three matches. And then he hurried out again. He scratched one of the matches on the piazza floor and managed to get the candle lighted with that first match. So he dropped the other two matches, he didn't know where, and he carried his candle to the grocery box, very carefully, so that it shouldn't blow out, and he reached in and put it in a corner. Then he lay down on the step and put his head and shoulders and his arms inside the box, and he took the two short sticks in his hands. David's mother had heard the chair scraping on the dining-room floor, when he pushed it over to get the matches, and she thought that, as likely as not, that was David, and she thought that she had better see what he was doing. She didn't think there was any great hurry about it, and so she came downstairs in a few minutes, and she went out upon the piazza. There she saw David's body and his fat little legs sticking out straight on the step, but his head and his arms were in the box, so she couldn't see them. [Illustration: PLAYING PLUMBER] And there was a light flickering inside the box, and there was a noise of scraping and knocking, once in a while. But she wasn't surprised. "What in the world are you doing, dear?" she asked. David drew his head out of the box so that he could see his mother and answer her. His face was pretty red. "I'm a plumber, mother," he said, "and I'm doing the work in the bathroom. Plumbers _always_ do it this way." David's mother laughed. "So they do, dear, pretty nearly," she said. "Be very careful of the candle, and don't burn yourself or set the box afire, and be sure to blow it out when you are through." And David nodded and put his head back in the box, and his mother went in, smiling. And his cat came and stood on the cover boards that had been left on, and she put her head down and peered into the box, but she didn't get in. And that's all of the plumber story. VIII THE PAINTER STORY