Mother Carey's Chickens
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
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