through the cross-piece and a rope over all."

"Have you any nails, Paddy?"

"No," said Mr Button, "I haven't."

"Then how're you goin' to build the house?"

"Ax me no questions now; I want to smoke me pipe."

But he had raised a devil difficult to lay. Morning, noon, and night
it was "Paddy, when are you going to begin the house?" or, "Paddy,
I guess I've got a way to make the canes stick together without
nailing." Till Mr Button, in despair, like a beaver, began to build.

There was great cane-cutting in the canebrake above, and, when
sufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three
days. He would have struck altogether, but he had found a
taskmaster.

The tireless Dick, young and active, with no original laziness in
his composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after
him like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him
off with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to
build a house.

Mr Button didn't. He wanted to rest. He did not mind fishing or
climbing a cocoa-nut tree, which he did to admiration by passing
a rope round himself and the tree, knotting it, and using it as a
support during the climb; but house-building was monotonous