第11章

Newman was taken by surprise and hesitated.He had never worked under price; indeed, he had sometimes gone hungry rather than do so; but now it seemed that others were doing it.And then he was so awfully hard up.If he refused this job he was not likely to get another in a hurry.He thought of his home and his family.Already they owed five weeks' rent, and last Monday the collector had hinted pretty plainly that the landlord would not wait much longer.Not only that, but if he did not get a job how were they to live? This morning he himself had had no breakfast to speak of, only a cup of tea and some dry bread.These thoughts crowded upon each other in his mind, but still he hesitated.Hunter began to move off.

`Well,' he said, `if you like to start you can come here at seven in the morning.' Then as Newman still hesitated he added impatiently, `Are you coming or not?'

`Yes, sir,' said Newman.

`All right,' said Hunter, affably.`I'll tell Crass to have a kit ready for you,'

He nodded in a friendly way to the man, who went off feeling like a criminal.

As Hunter resumed his march, well pleased with himself, the fifth man, who had been waiting all this time, came to meet him.As he approached, Hunter recognized him as one who had started work for Rushton & Co early in the summer, but who had left suddenly of his own accord, having taken offence at some bullying remark of Hunter's.

Hunter was glad to see this man.He guessed that the fellow must be very hard pressed to come again and ask for work after what had happened.

`Any chance of a job, sir?'

Hunter appeared to reflect.

`I believe I have room for one,' he said at length.`But you're such an uncertain kind of chap.You don't seem to care much whether you work or not.You're too independent, you know; one can't say two words to you but you must needs clear off.'

The man made no answer.

`We can't tolerate that kind of thing, you know,' Hunter added.`If we were to encourage men of your stamp we should never know where we are.'

So saying, Hunter moved away and again proceeded on his journey.

When he arrived within about three yards of the gate he noiselessly laid his machine against the garden fence.The high evergreens that grew inside still concealed him from the observation of anyone who might be looking out of the windows of the house.Then he carefully crept along till he came to the gate post, and bending down, he cautiously peeped round to see if he could detect anyone idling, or talking, or smoking.There was no one in sight except old Jack Linden, who was rubbing down the lobby doors with pumice-stone and water.Hunter noiselessly opened the gate and crept quietly along the grass border of the garden path.His idea was to reach the front door without being seen, so that Linden could not give notice of his approach to those within.In this he succeeded and passed silently into the house.He did not speak to Linden; to do so would have proclaimed his presence to the rest.He crawled stealthily over the house but was disappointed in his quest, for everyone he saw was hard at work.Upstairs he noticed that the door of one of the rooms was closed.

Old Joe Philpot had been working in this room all day, washing off the old whitewash from the ceiling and removing the old papers from the walls with a broad bladed, square topped knife called a stripper.

Although it was only a small room, Joe had had to tear into the work pretty hard all the time, for the ceiling seemed to have had two or three coats of whitewash without ever having been washed off, and there were several thicknesses of paper on the walls.The difficulty of removing these papers was increased by the fact that there was a dado which had been varnished.In order to get this off it had been necessary to soak it several times with strong soda water, and although Joe was as careful as possible he had not been able to avoid getting some of this stuff on his fingers.The result was that his nails were all burnt and discoloured and the flesh round them cracked and bleeding.However, he had got it all off at last, and he was not sorry, for his right arm and shoulder were aching from the prolonged strain and in the palm of the right hand there was a blister as large as a shilling, caused by the handle of the stripping knife.

All the old paper being off, Joe washed down the walls with water, and having swept the paper into a heap in the middle of the floor, he mixed with a small trowel some cement on a small board and proceeded to stop up the cracks and holes in the walls and ceiling.After a while, feeling very tired, it occurred to him that he deserved a spell and a smoke for five minutes.He closed the door and placed a pair of steps against it.There were two windows in the room almost opposite each other; these he opened wide in order that the smoke and smell of his pipe might be carried away.Having taken these precautions against surprise, he ascended to the top of the step ladder that he had laid against the door and sat down at ease.Within easy reach was the top of a cupboard where he had concealed a pint of beer in a bottle.To this he now applied himself.Having taken a long pull at the bottle, he tenderly replaced it on the top of the cupboard and proceeded to `hinjoy' a quiet smoke, remarking to himself:

`This is where we get some of our own back.'

He held, however, his trowel in one hand, ready for immediate action in case of interruption.