And when they had the hole dug, another man came, carrying a little tree. There were a whole pile of little trees out near the road, and they all had their roots tied up in bagging, or a kind of coarse cloth. The tree which the man was carrying was a little Christmas tree. He had taken the cloth off of the roots, and he was cutting off, with his knife, some of the ends of roots. Then he put it in the hole, carefully, and the men spread the roots out all around in the bottom of the hole, and they sifted some dark-colored dirt all about them, and they worked it in between the fine roots with their fingers, and they pressed it down hard. The man who had put the tree in was holding on to it all the time, so that it should grow up straight. And when the roots were all right and the dirt was pressed down hard, he let go of the tree and took up the end of a hose that was lying on the ground, right behind him. David hadn't noticed the hose before. It came from a shiny hose-faucet, and the hose-faucet stuck out of the house just above the foundation, halfway along the side. The man let water run from the hose into the dirt that had just been put around the roots of the tree, and he let it run for a long time. And when the top of the hole was just a puddle of mud, he stopped the water and dropped the hose, and the men scattered a little dark-colored dirt that was dry over the top of it. That dark-colored dirt is called loam, and it is the best kind of dirt to make things grow. David saw that from the house down to where the path would be to the back door was already covered with the same dark-colored dirt. The other side of the path was nice and smooth, but it looked sort of raw and the dirt was a yellow color. Just beside the road was a great pile of dark-colored dirt, and there was a two-wheeled cart backed up to the pile, and a man was shoveling the dirt into the cart. When the cart was filled, the man tossed his shovel on top of the dirt and started walking along. "Come along, Jack," he said. The horse had had his ears pricked forward, and when the man said that, he started and followed the man to the end of the yellow dirt. There he stopped, and the man took his shovel off the cart and threw it on the ground. And he took the backboard out of the cart, and he put his knee on the cart, and the top tipped back and slid all that dirt out in a heap on the ground. Then the horse walked along two steps, and the man took his shovel and scraped out what was left in the cart, and he tipped the top of the cart back again and he put the backboard in. And he got up into the cart, and the horse turned around and walked back to the pile to get another load. David wanted to ask somebody some questions about the dirt, but he didn't know any of the men, and they all seemed to be very busy.