First, he took up a brick from the pile, with his left hand, and he generally tossed the brick up a little way in the air, and it turned over before he caught it again, so that he saw all sides of it; and, with the flat trowel which he held in his right hand, he scooped up some mortar.
And he slapped the trowelful of mortar down on the bricks where he wanted to put that other brick, and he gave a little wipe with the trowel around the edges, and he pressed the brick that he was holding in his left hand down into place, and he tapped the brick with the handle of the trowel, and the mortar squeezed out all around, and, with his trowel, he scooped off the mortar that had squeezed out, and he slapped that down in a new place.
Then he began again, and reached down for another brick.
The little boy was so busy watching the bricklayer that he forgot all about the masons who were putting mortar on the wall.
But, pretty soon, all the men said something to all the other men, and they stopped laying bricks, and they began to take off their overalls.
"What are they going to do now?" the little boy asked.
"They are going to eat their dinner," said the foreman. "Come on."
So the foreman and the little boy got down on the ground again, and the foreman set the little boy down, and he took his hand, and they went back, near the pile of sand, where there were some nice boards to sit on.
And the men all came trooping out of the cellar, and each man went and got his dinner from the place where he had put it when he came there in the morning.
Some of the men had their dinner in pails and some had theirs in baskets and one man had his in a newspaper, so that he wouldn't have anything to carry home at night.