Charlie and His Puppy Bingo

by Helen Hill; Violet Maxwell

And—when Charlie did get home, what do you think he found? Why, Charlie found that something most interesting and ex-cit-ing had been happening while he was away in the country. Some builders had started to build a house on the other side of the road, and he could sit on his own front gate and watch them build.

The builders had already built quite a lot of the house, and in front of what they had built was a big pile of bricks and also a pile of sand and quicklime to make mortar of.

Charlie Watched the Builders

It was late in the afternoon, so the builders had stopped working, but Charlie wanted to stay right there and look at everything. But his Mother and his Auntie said, “No.” They said that it was getting late and Charlie must come right in and have his supper and go to bed. To-morrow he could watch the builders build as much as ever he wanted to.

So the next day Charlie ran out immediately after breakfast. The builders were already at work—they were working hard, putting the bricks on top of each other. Charlie saw how they put each brick on top of two others, he saw how they did it very carefully so that the brick was ex-act-ly in the middle of the two below it. Then he saw how carefully the builders put the mortar on with a flat, wide knife, so that none of the mortar dripped over the edge of the bricks but made a nice straight line up and across. And, because the bricks were laid, one in the middle of the two below, the white line of the mortar made a most interesting design.

Charlie was ab-so-lute-ly fascinated, he thought that he would never get tired of watching those builders build.

Then Topsy and Bingo came out to see what Charlie was doing and to get him to play with them, but Charlie was much too interested in watching the house being built, so he paid no attention at all. No, he paid no attention to Topsy and Bingo, but went on watching the builders build the house.

After a while one of the builders looked up, and he said, “Hello, you seem to like watching us build this house; I guess you would like to be over here helping us.” And Charlie said, “Oh, yes, I would like to come over and help you, I mean to be a house builder when I grow up.” Then the builder said, “Is that so? Have you had any practice in building houses?” Charlie said, “No, I have never built a real house, but I can build beautiful houses with my wooden blocks.”

But the builder said, “Well, I guess you need more practice than that—you have to know how to put the mortar on, and that is not as easy as it looks. How would you like me to give you some bricks and mortar and then you can build yourself a house in the corner of your yard?” Yes, the builder ac-tu-al-ly said that to Charlie! And he also asked him, “Have you an express wagon that you can haul the bricks in?”