There are people who are so ready to do a job themselves, and put it on the backs of others. My uncle Podger was just that sort of man.
You never saw such a noise up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger was going to do a job. A picture had come home from the shop and it was standing in the dining-room, waiting for somebody who would put it up; and Aunt Podger asked what they were to do with it, and Uncle Podger said:
"Oh, you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that."
And then he took off his coat, and began. He sent the girl (зд. служанка)out for nails and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get.
"Now, you go and get me my hammer, Will," he shouted, "and you bring me the ruler, Tom; and I shall want the ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too. And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold the light for me; and, Jim! you run round to Mr Goggles, and tell him, "Pa's kind regards(большой привет от папы), and hopes his leg's better: and will he lend him his drill?" And Tom! - where's Tom? - Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."
And then he lifted up the picture, and dropped it. The glass broke and he cut himself when he tried to pick up the pieces. And then he ran round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he didn't know where he had put the coat, and all the house had to stop looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat.
"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a thing in all my life - upon my word I didn't. Six of you! - and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago!"
Then he got up, and found that he had been sitting on it, and called out:
"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now."
At last a new glass for the picture had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought. The whole family were standing round, ready to help. Two people had to hold the chair, and a third helped him up on it, and held him there, and a fourth handed him a nail, and dropped it.
And we all had to go down on our knees and look for it, while he stood on the chair, and shouted, and wanted to know if they were going to keep him there all the evening.
The nail was found at last, but by that time he had lost the hammer.
"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Seven of you and you don't know what I did with the hammer!"
We found the hammer for him, and then he lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we each discovered it in a different place, and he called us all fools, one after another, and told us to get down.
And Aunt Maria said that she would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language, and next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he would let her know in time, so that she could go and spend a week with her mother while he was doing it.
"Oh, You women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger replied. "Why, I like doing a little job of this sort."
About midnight, the picture was up - very crooked and insecure, the wall round looked as if it had been smoothed down with a rake (как будто по ней прошлись граблями) , and everybody was tired - but not Uncle Podger.
"There you are," he said, stepping heavily off the chair. "Why, some people invite a man in to do a little thing like that!"
(From "Three Men in a Boat" after Jerome K. Jerome)
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