He went upstairs to phone Crumb. To his amazement he reached him. Mr. Crumb was laid up with a bad cold. He didn't seem to think that attaching a pegboard to a stone wall was much of a problem and he tossed off the building of the worktable equally lightly. The only trouble was that he himself was tied up on the school job. That was why he hadn't been able to finish the porch. No, he didn't know of any handyman carpenter. There wasn't any such thing any more. Carpenters all wanted steady work and at the moment every mother's son for twenty miles around that could hammer nails for twenty-five dollars a day was working on the school job.

There was a fellow named Blatz over Smithtown way. Nobody liked to hire him because you never could tell when he was going to be taken drunk. Mr. Crumb would probably see him at Lodge Meeting the next night. If he was sober, which was doubtful, he'd have him get in touch with Mr. Crombie.

Mr. Blatz had been at least sober enough to remember to telephone and he turned out to be the greatest boon that had come into Mr. Crombie's life since he moved to Highfield, in spite of the fact that he didn't work very fast or very long at a time, and he didn't like to work at all unless Mr. Crombie hung around and talked to him. He said he was the lonely type and working in a cellar you saw funny things coming out of the cracks in the wall if they wasn't nobody with you. So Mr. Crombie sat on a wooden box and talked in order to keep Mr. Blatz's mind from funny things. At the same time he watched carefully to see how one attached pegboards to stone walls, but Mr. Blatz was usually standing in his line of vision and it all seemed so simple that he didn't like to disclose his ignorance.