e was almost at a loss to know what to say
or do.

In order that they might set about their work understandingly, Nelly
produced what had originally been a tape-measure one foot in length.
It had seen such hard usage, however, that only about eight inches
remained. With this the amateur architect set about a portion of his
work, which was to him very painful.

He decided first that it would be a useless waste of material to build
a stage entirely across one end of the attic, since they would not be
crowded from lack of room, owing to the small number of performers,
and after a great amount of pacing back and forth, as well as mental
calculation, he drew two chalk lines at supposed equal distances from
the walls. Between these lines he measured with his fragment of a
tape-measure, and found that it was exactly thirty times the length of
the tape. Thirty times eight inches was, therefore, the length of his
proposed stage, or, more properly speaking, his platform, and he
seated himself, with a look of perplexity on his face and a
remarkably small piece of lead-pencil in his mouth, to figure up the
grand total of inches. He could multiply the cipher easily enough, for
he was positive that the answer would be the same, however large the
multiplier might be; but the question of how much eight times three
was troubled him greatly.

After trying in vain to arrive at the correct result by the process of
multiplication, he, in his despair, was about to resort to the
tiresome expedient of counting the number of inches on the
tape-measure thirty times over, when Paul astonished him considerably
by giving the result without even using the pencil and paper.

"How nice that is!" said Johnny, with a sigh of relief, as he wiped
from his brow the perspiration that had been forced out by his mental
exertions, and he began to realize that a knowledge of the
multiplication table was very useful to a person in any line of
business.

Paul further informed him that two hundred and forty inches were
twenty feet; and then he proceeded with greater confidence to
calculate the width, which he at first decided should be twelve feet,
but afterwards changed to six when Ben suggested that they would
require too much lumber if they had it so wide.

[Illustration: "MULTIPLICATION IS VEXATION."]

After it was settled that the platform should be raised two feet
from the floor, and Paul had figured up the exact number of square
feet of lumber whi