Then he took up another clapboard and put it close up to the one that he had just fastened, with its thin edge tucked under the thick edge of the one above.
The men put on clapboards very fast, and David was so interested in seeing them do it that he forgot that the foreman had not come back for him.
He had gone up nearer, so as to see just how the clapboards went on, when he heard the foreman's voice behind him.
"Well, Davie," said the foreman, "do you think you could put on clapboards as fast as that?"
David shook his head.
"No, I couldn't."
"Perhaps not. But come on, and we'll see what you can do with shingles."
And the foreman took David's small hand in his big one, and they went to where a ladder stood leaning against the edge of the piazza roof.
A little way below the edge of the roof there was a rough sort of a platform, made of two boards laid on some other boards that were nailed to the posts of the piazza and to long sticks which went up and down and had their ends resting on the ground.
This was what the carpenters called a staging or scaffolding, and when they got through their work, they would take it down.