David nodded, but he didn't say anything, for he didn't understand why the carpenters didn't make the blinds. Pretty soon he pulled at the foreman's hand. "I want to go back," he said. So they went back to the painters who were painting the side of the house. They had lowered the staging so low that the foreman could reach it. "I'll tell you what, Davie," the foreman said. "Do you suppose you could paint a clapboard?" "Oh," cried David, "will they let me?" "I guess so," the foreman answered. "You ask them." David looked up at the painters, and the painters looked down at David, and they were smiling. David started to speak, but he couldn't ask what he wanted to. And the painters saw what was the matter, and one of them spoke. "Want to paint a board?" he asked. "Well, come on up here." So the foreman put his hands under David's arms, and he lifted David right up, over the staging, and set him down with his feet hanging over. And the painter dipped his brush into the paint, and patted it gently against the side of the paint-pot, _plop_, _plop_, _plop_, and he handed the brush to David. "Oh," David said, "it's heavy!" "So it is," the painter said. "The paint is mostly lead, that's why. Now, you move the brush away from you as if you were sweeping the floor or dusting the board. Then, when it has gone as far as you can reach, you bring it back on the other side." David tried, but he didn't do it very well and the paint squeezed out of the brush and ran down and dripped from the edge of the clapboard. "Not that way," the painter said. "I'll show you." Then he took hold of David's wrist, but he left the brush in David's hand, and he moved it the way it ought to go, and he swept up all the little rivers of paint and all the little drips, and spread it smoothly over the clapboard. "There!" said the painter. "Now, do you see?" David nodded, and he tried again. This time he did better, but the paint was all gone from the brush, and he held it out to the painter for more. So the painter dipped it again, and David took it, and painted some more. And each time he did better than he had done the last time, and he hitched along on the staging, and that clapboard was all painted before he knew it. And David sighed and started to get up on his feet. But the other painter called to him. "Hey, David!" he called. "Aren't you going to do any painting for me? That isn't fair. You come over and do a board for me." David smiled with pleasure. "Yes, I will," he said. So he crawled on his hands and knees along the staging, and the foreman walked along on the ground beside him. And he painted a clapboard for that other painter, but a great drop of the paint got on the leg of his overalls. "Oh," he said, "I got some paint on my overalls." "Gracious!" said the painter. "That's nothing. Look at my overalls."