Then he put the pole back, leaning against the twig, and he came slowly down to the ground.
"There!" he said. "Did you see how I did it? Do you think that you could paint some?"
David's eyes glistened.
"Oh, could I? But I couldn't walk up the tree."
The man smiled.
"I'm afraid you couldn't, but you can paint as far as you can reach with the pole."
The other men were busy on trees near, and they watched while David painted the mud spots on another tree which the man found for him.
He wasn't very tall and there were only two spots which he could reach while he stood on the ground.
But the man held him up in his arms as high as he could, and when he had painted all those spots, the man fixed the paint brush in the end of the pole.
It was pretty heavy for such a little boy to manage, and the end would wave around so that he couldn't make the brush paint where he wanted it to.