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O NCE upon a time there was a little boy, and he was almost five years old, and his name was David. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.
He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls when he was playing.
One morning he was playing in the thin woods behind his house.
He had his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he was walking slowly along, kicking the dead leaves and looking up at the leaves on the trees.
Not nearly all the leaves had fallen from the trees yet, but those leaves that were still on the trees had turned to all kinds of pretty colors: red and yellow and a great many pretty browns which looked alive. And some leaves were red and yellow together, and some were still green with red and yellow spots on them, and some leaves had not changed their color at all, but were green all over.
And the squirrels were very busy hunting chestnuts and they didn't pay much attention to David.
Suddenly there was a great scurrying, and every squirrel went racing up the nearest tree, and David's cat came running, with her bushy tail sticking straight up in the air, and she ran a little way ahead of David, and she flopped over on her back in a little pile of leaves, and she began playing with the leaves.
David laughed at her. "Funny kitty!" he said.
Then he turned and went on talking, but he wasn't talking to his cat and he wasn't talking to himself.
His pretend playmate had come, and it was the boy, this time, and he had brought the cat.
So David and that pretend little boy played together for a long time.
Sometimes they dragged the cart together, and sometimes they stopped and hunted for chestnuts, and they put into the cart the chestnuts that they found.
And after a while they came into that part of the woods which was behind the new house.
And David heard some men talking together up at the new house, and he looked and saw them squatting down beside the house, and two of the men had shovels.
So David and the pretend little boy hurried to go to the new house, to see what the men were doing, and they dragged the cart, and the shovel and the hoe and the chestnuts all rattled about together in the bottom of it; and the cat went running on ahead.
But, when David got there, the pretend little boy had gone, for David had forgotten about him.
And David stopped a little way from the men, and looked about.
The grading men must have got their work all finished, for the ground all about didn't look at all as it had when the foreman and David had left it.
There weren't any signs of the rubbish, and the dirt was up higher on the foundation in a nice straight line, and it sloped down to the field all around, and it had been made all smooth.
David wondered about the great hole that was under the front steps, and he went around there and looked, and the hole wasn't there any more, but the ground came up to the steps, and a man was raking gravel smooth, to make a front walk like the one that went into David's house.
David didn't say anything, and the man didn't say anything either, but kept on raking.
So David went back to the place where the men were, with the shovels.
Those men were digging a round hole in the ground, about big enough for David to sit in and stretch his legs out straight.
And when they had the hole dug, another man came, carrying a little tree.
There were a whole pile of little trees out near the road, and they all had their roots tied up in bagging, or a kind of coarse cloth.
The tree which the man was carrying was a little Christmas tree. He had taken the cloth off of the roots, and he was cutting off, with his knife, some of the ends of roots.
Then he put it in the hole, carefully, and the men
spread the roots out all around in the bottom of the
hole, and they sifted some
The man who had put the tree in was holding on to it all the time, so that it should grow up straight.
And when the roots were all right and the dirt was pressed down hard, he let go of the tree and took up the end of a hose that was lying on the ground, right behind him.
David hadn't noticed the hose before. It
came from a shiny
The man let water run from the hose into the dirt that had just been put around the roots of the tree, and he let it run for a long time.
And when the top of the hole was just a puddle of mud,
he stopped the water and dropped the hose, and the men
scattered a little
That dark-colored dirt is called loam, and it is the best kind of dirt to make things grow.
David saw that from the house down to where the path would be to the back door was already covered with the same dark colored dirt.
The other side of the path was nice and smooth, but it looked sort of raw and the dirt was a yellow color.
Just beside the road was a great pile of dark-colored
dirt, and there was a
When the cart was filled, the man tossed his shovel on top of the dirt and started walking along.
"Come along, Jack," he said.
The horse had had his ears pricked forward, and when the man said that, he started and followed the man to the end of the yellow dirt.
There he stopped, and the man took his shovel off the cart and threw it on the ground. And he took the backboard out of the cart, and he put his knee on the cart, and the top tipped back and slid all that dirt out in a heap on the ground.
Then the horse walked along two steps, and the man took his shovel and scraped out what was left in the cart, and he tipped the top of the cart back again and he put the backboard in.
And he got up into the cart, and the horse turned around and walked back to the pile to get another load.
David wanted to ask somebody some questions about the dirt, but he didn't know any of the men, and they all seemed to be very busy.
So he just watched; and he saw another man come, and he had a shovel, and he spread around the dirt in the heap that the cart had just dumped until it was pretty even and smooth.
And the horse came, bringing another load, and that was dumped, and the man spread that around with his shovel.
David went nearer, and the man saw him.
"Are you going to plant some little trees?" David asked.
"We're going to sow grass seed here," the man answered, "when this is all covered with loam."
Then another load of loam came, and he was busy with his shovel, and David went back to watch the other men plant trees.
They were planting more little Christmas trees near that first one, five trees in a kind of a clump, and David watched them dig the holes and put the trees in, and spread the roots about, and put dirt on them, and stamp the dirt down hard, and put the water in.
And when the Christmas trees were all planted, they put another kind at the back corner of the house.
Then they went to the front corner of the house, and one of them said that there was the place for the lilac bushes.
And he got the lilac bushes and cut off a part of the roots while the other men were digging the holes, and they planted the lilac bushes in the holes, but they didn't do it so carefully as they had with the other kinds of trees.
And when they had the holes filled up and the water turned off, and the planting of lilac bushes all finished, they stopped and leaned on their shovels and looked around, to see what else they had to do.
The loam was all over the yellow dirt, and the last load was just being spread around.
So some of the men went to get the grass seed. That grass seed was in green bags.
And they took up bags of grass seed and began walking slowly along over the ground, and they took up handfuls of the grass seed and scattered it in the air so that it fell evenly over the ground.
And they sowed the seed all among the trees they had just planted, and all over the smooth dirt, and wherever they wanted the grass to grow; but they didn't sow it in the paths.
Then two other men came, and they were dragging a great heavy stone roller behind them.
It was so heavy that the two men had to walk very slowly, each dragging it by one handle.
And they went to and fro over the ground where the grass seed had been sown, and they rolled it down smooth and hard and shiny.
Before the roller men had got through, the others had gone and put on their coats and gathered up their tools and David knew that they were through their work.
So he went where he had left his cart, and he looked for the pretend little boy, but he had gone away, and David couldn't find him. And he looked for his cat, and he couldn't see her either.
So he took up the handle of his cart, and he walked along to his house, dragging his cart, with his shovel and his hoe and the chestnuts all rattling together in the bottom of it.
And that's all.