"Good-bye, dear," said his mother. "Be very careful."
He nodded. "Yes, I will." He was going out, but he stopped. "I don't hear it now, mother. I don't hear the noise. Do you suppose they've stopped doing it?"
"If you go right along over there, I think you'll find out about it."
So the little boy went out, and he picked up his shovel, but he couldn't find his hoe.
And he put his shovel into his cart, and took up the handle of the cart, and his cat came running, and he went toward the new house, dragging his cart behind him with his shovel rattling in the bottom of it. His cat ran on ahead.
Long before he got as far as the house, he saw some men's heads bob up in the middle of the road; heads without any bodies to them.
And he went nearer, and he saw that the men were in a trench that they had dug in the road, as far as the new house.
Some long iron pipes were in the gutter. The pipes were big enough for his kitty to crawl through.
He wanted to ask somebody about them, but there was nobody there except the two men in the trench, so he walked along until he came to the mortar box.
The mortar man wasn't there. He had gone into the house with a hod of mortar.