she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while
it was being done.

"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger would
reply, picking himself up. "Why, I LIKE doing a little job of this
sort."

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail
would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and
Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly
sufficient to flatten his nose.

Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was
made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and
insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed
down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - except Uncle
Podger.

"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the
charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride.
"Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like
that!"

Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know, and I told
him so. I said I could not permit him to take so much labour upon
himself. I said:

"No; YOU get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue, and George
write down, and I'll do the work."