“The canes—one from the other?”
“After you’ve fixed thim, one cross t’other, you drive a nail through the cross-piece and a rope over all.”
“Have you any nails, Paddy?”
“No,” said Mr Button, “I haven’t.”
“Then how’re you goin’ to build the house?”
“Ax me no questions now; I want to smoke me pipe.”
But he had raised a devil difficult to lay. Morning, noon, and night it was “Paddy, when are you going to begin the house?” or, “Paddy, I guess I’ve got a way to make the canes stick together without nailing.” Till Mr Button, in despair, like a beaver, began to build.
There was great cane-cutting in the cane-brake above, and, when sufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three days. He would have struck altogether, but he had found a taskmaster.
The tireless Dick, young and active, with no original laziness in his composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after him like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him off with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to build a house.
Mr Button didn’t. He wanted to rest. He did not mind fishing or climbing a cocoa-nut tree, which he did to admiration by passing a rope round himself and the tree, knotting it, and using it as a support during the climb; but house-building was monotonous work.