"Want to paint a board?" he asked. "Well, come on up here."
So the foreman put his hands under David's arms, and he lifted David right up, over the staging, and set him down with his feet hanging over. And the painter dipped his brush into the paint, and patted it gently against the side of the paint-pot, plop, plop, plop, and he handed the brush to David.
"Oh," David said, "it's heavy!"
"So it is," the painter said. "The paint is mostly lead, that's why. Now, you move the brush away from you as if you were sweeping the floor or dusting the board. Then, when it has gone as far as you can reach, you bring it back on the other side."
David tried, but he didn't do it very well and the paint squeezed out of the brush and ran down and dripped from the edge of the clapboard.
"Not that way," the painter said. "I'll show you."
Then he took hold of David's wrist, but he left the brush in David's hand, and he moved it the way it ought to go, and he swept up all the little rivers of paint and all the little drips, and spread it smoothly over the clapboard.
"There!" said the painter. "Now, do you see?"
David nodded, and he tried again.
This time he did better, but the paint was all gone from the brush, and he held it out to the painter for more.