So the man put one leg over a branch, and he took his pole, which was leaning against a twig just beside him, and he fixed the paint brush in the end of the pole, in a place that was meant for it, and he reached out with the pole and painted all those egg bunches on the small branches. Then he put the pole back, leaning against the twig, and he came slowly down to the ground. "There!" he said. "Did you see how I did it? Do you think that you could paint some?" David's eyes glistened. "Oh, could I? But I couldn't walk up the tree." The man smiled. "I'm afraid you couldn't, but you can paint as far as you can reach with the pole." The other men were busy on trees near, and they watched while David painted the mud spots on another tree which the man found for him. He wasn't very tall and there were only two spots which he could reach while he stood on the ground. But the man held him up in his arms as high as he could, and when he had painted all those spots, the man fixed the paint brush in the end of the pole. It was pretty heavy for such a little boy to manage, and the end would wave around so that he couldn't make the brush paint where he wanted it to. So the man helped David to hold the pole steady and paint as far as it could reach. Just then David heard his mother calling him. "I've got to go now," he said to the man. "I think my mother wants me." "Well, good-bye," the man said. "We're much obliged." "You're welcome," David said. "Good-bye." And he turned around and went galloping through the woods to his house. And his cat met him, and then his mother met him. "Where were you, dear?" his mother asked. "I was helping the tree-men paint egg-spots. How big are moth-eggs, mother?" But his mother didn't know. And that's all. X THE CLEARING-UP STORY Once upon a time there was a little boy, and he was almost five years old, and his name was David. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself. He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls when he was playing. They had been building a new house in the field next to David's house, and it was all done. Even the last coat of paint was dry. David knew, because he had tried it with his finger to see. He had tried it three times, and the first two times it wasn't dry, but the last time it was. And the carpenters had gone, and the painters had gone, but they had left great messes and piles of stuff that had been swept out of the house, and heaps of the sawed-off ends of boards, and some good boards, and piles of broken laths and plaster and the little pieces that they had sawed off the laths, and some broken saw-horses, and a lot of other rubbish. One morning David heard the rattle of a wagon; and he looked and saw a wagon stop at the new house, and he saw the nice foreman that he knew, and there were two other men.