He was painting a shelf-table, screwed to the wall within a space at the end of the verandah, which they had completely enclosed with wire mosquito netting. Bob was hanging the door of this open-air room in position, a task requiring judgment, as the floor of the verandah was old and uneven.
“Nearly, sir,” he mumbled, his utterance made difficult by the fact of having several screws in his mouth. He worked vigorously for a few moments, and then stood back to survey his job. “This is going to be a great little room—though it's hard just now to imagine that it will ever be warm enough for it.”
“Just you wait a few months until we get a touch of hot weather, and the mosquitoes come out!” said David Linton. “Then you and Tommy will thankfully entrench yourselves in here at dusk, and listen to the singing hordes dashing themselves against the netting in the effort to get at you!”
“That's the kind of thing they used to tell me on the Nauru,” Bob said laughing; “but I didn't quite expect it from you, Mr. Linton!”
The squatter chuckled.
“Well, indeed, it's no great exaggeration in some years,” he said. “They can be bad enough for anything, though it isn't always they are. But an open-air room is never amiss, for if there aren't mosquitoes a lamp will attract myriads of other insects on a hot night. That looks all right, Bob; you've managed that door very well.”
“First rate!” said Jim and Wally approvingly, returning arm in arm.
“You're great judges!” David Linton rejoined, looking at the pair. “Have you returned to work, may I ask, or are you still imitating the lilies of the field?”
“Jim is; he couldn't help it,” said Wally. “But I have been studying that oak tree out in the front, Mr. Linton. It seems to me that a seat built round it would be very comforting to weary bones on warm evenings—”
Bob gathered up his tools with decision in each movement.