his mother didn't like
to have him go so far as the corner.

But he was pretending, and he didn't know how far he had come.

He played in the gravel of the gutter for a long time, and he was
talking nearly all the time.

His cat was there, taking little runs away, with her bushy tail
sticking straight up in the air. Then she would lie down on her back
and play with the air, and then she always jumped up in a great hurry
and ran back to David and rubbed against him.

But David wasn't talking to his cat, and he wasn't talking to himself.

He was talking to the pretend child who was his playmate and who had
come there holding to the other handle of his cart and helping him
drag it.

And he was so busy that he didn't notice the great wagon that was just
about to turn the corner.

The driver called to him.

"Hey, little boy! Don't get run over."

David scrambled up on the sidewalk before he even looked, for he
remembered to be careful.

Then he looked, and he saw a big wagon that was drawn by two horses,
and the wagon was loaded with short, shiny boards, tied together in
bundles, and on top of the bundles of short, shiny boards were bundles
of shingles, a great many of them.

David knew what shingles looked like when they came in bundles, but he
wondered what the shiny, short boards were.

But he didn't ask, because the horses were almost trotting, they were
walking so fast, and the driver seemed to be pretty busy.

He supposed that the shingles and things were going to the new house,
and he watched the wagon until it stopped there.

Then he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked off with it as
fast as he could walk, and then he began to run, and his shovel and
his hoe rattled so that you would have thought they would rattle out.

The pretend child didn't go with David, for he had forgotten all about
her.

Sometimes the child was a girl and sometimes it was a boy; but it was
a girl that morning. She was left in the gutter at the corner.

And David didn't call his cat, and the cat stayed at the corner for a
while, and first she looked at the pretend little girl and then she
looked after David, and she didn't know which to go with.

But at last she went running after David, and she caught up with him,
and she ran on ahead, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the
air.

When David got to the house, he found the wagon there, and the horses
were standing still, and the driver was throwing o