tal fowl-houses all the morning! Young Wally, you
need some one to sit on your head." He took off his coat slowly.

"Ten to one," said Wally hastily, "if we had time to look into the
matter we'd find you'd whitewashed the fowls as well! These Army
Johnnies are so beastly impractical!" He gathered up his brushes and
fled, pursued by his chum. Sounds of warfare came faintly from the
distance.

"It's a good thing some of us are sane," said Mr. Linton laughing.
"Nearly finished, Bob?"

He was painting a shelf-table, screwed to the wall within a space at
the end of the verandah, which they had completely enclosed with wire
mosquito netting. Bob was hanging the door of this open-air room in
position, a task requiring judgment, as the floor of the verandah was
old and uneven.

"Nearly, sir," he mumbled, his utterance made difficult by the fact
of having several screws in his mouth. He worked vigorously for a few
moments, and then stood back to survey his job. "This is going to be
a great little room--though it's hard just now to imagine that it will
ever be warm enough for it."

"Just you wait a few months until we get a touch of hot weather, and
the mosquitoes come out!" said David Linton. "Then you and Tommy will
thankfully entrench yourselves in here at dusk, and listen to the
singing hordes dashing themselves against the netting in the effort to
get at you!"

"That's the kind of thing they used to tell me on the Nauru," Bob said
laughing; "but I didn't quite expect it from you, Mr. Linton!"

The squatter chuckled.

"Well, indeed, it's no great exaggeration in some years," he said. "They
can be bad enough for anything, though it isn't always they are. But an
open-air room is never amiss, for if there aren't mosquitoes a lamp will
attract myriads of other insects on a hot night. That looks all right,
Bob; you've managed that door very well."

"First rate!" said Jim and Wally approvingly, returning arm in arm.

"You're great judges!" David Linton rejoined, looking at the pair. "Have
you returned to work, may I ask, or are you still imitating the lilies
of the field?"

"Jim is; he couldn't help it," said Wally. "But I have been studying
that oak tree out in the front, Mr. Linton. It seems to me that a
seat built round it would be very comforting to weary bones on warm
evenings--"

Bob gathered up his tools with decision in each movement.

"Wally has come to that state of mind in which he can't look at anything