“If we hadn’t been in such a sweat to git settled,” remarked Osh with a clip of his big shears, “I really’d ought to have plastered this front entry all over!  ‘T wa’n’t callin’ for paper half’s loud as ’t was for plaster.  Old Parson Bradley hed been a farmer afore he turned minister, and one Sunday mornin’ his parish was thornin’ him to pray for rain, so he says:  ’Thou knowest, O Lord! it’s manure this land wants, ‘n’ not water, but in Thy mercy send rain plenteously upon us.’”

“Mr. Popham,” said Gilbert, who had been patiently awaiting his opportunity, “the pieces of paper are cut for those narrow places each side of the front door.  Can’t I paste those on while you talk to us?”

“’Course you can, handy as you be with tools!  There ain’t no trick to it.  Most anybody can be a paperer.  As Parson Bradley said when he was talkin’ to a Sunday-school during a presidential campaign:  ’One of you boys perhaps can be a George Washington and another may rise to be a Thomas Jefferson; any of you, the Lord knows, can be a James K. Polk!’”

“I don’t know much about Polk,” said Gilbert.

“P’raps nobody did very much, but the parson hated him like p’ison.  See here, Peter, I ain’t made o’ paste!  You’ve used up ’bout a quart a’ready!  What are you doin’ out there anyway?  I’ve heerd o’ paintin’ the town,—­I guess you’re paperin’ it, ain’t you?”

Peter was too busy and too eager for paste to reply, the facts of the case being that while Mr. Popham held the family spellbound by his conversation, he himself was papering the outside of the house with scraps of assorted paper as high up as his short arms could reach.

“There’s another thing you can do, Gilbert,” continued Mr. Popham.  “I’ve mixed a pail o’ that green paint same as your mother wanted, an’ I’ve brought you a tip-top brush.  The settin’ room has a good nice floor; matched boards, no hummocks nor hollers,—­all as flat’s one of my wife’s pancakes,—­an’ not a knot hole in it anywheres.  You jest put your first coat on, brushin’ lengthways o’ the boards, and let it dry good.  Don’t let your folks go stepping on it, neither.  The minute a floor’s painted women folks are crazy to git int’ the room.  They want their black alpacky that’s in the closet, an’ the lookin’ glass that’s on the mantelpiece, or the feather duster that’s hangin’ on the winder, an’ will you jest pass out the broom that’s behind the door?  The next mornin’ you’ll find lots o’ little spots where they’ve tiptoed in to see if the paint’s dry an’ how it’s goin’ to look.  Where I work, they most allers say it’s the cat,—­well! that answer may deceive some folks, but ‘t wouldn’t me.—­Don’t slop your paint, Gilbert; work quick an’ neat an’ even; then paintin’ ain’t no trick ’t all.  Any fool, the Lord knows, can pick up that trade!—­Now I guess it’s about noon time, an’ I’ll have to be diggin’ for home.  Maria sets down an’ looks at the clock from half past eleven on.  She’ll git a meal o’ cold pork ‘n’ greens, cold string beans, gingerbread, ‘n’ custard pie on t’ the table; then she’ll stan’ in the front door an’ holler:  ’Hurry up, Ossian! it’s struck twelve more ’n two minutes ago, ‘n’ everything ‘s gittin’ overdone!’”