`There you are, you see!' said the tall man.`There's an example for yer! If you 'adn't served 'im as you did you'd most likely 'ave 'ad to put up with a lot more ole buck.'
They all agreed that the little man had done quite right: they all said that they didn' blame him in the least: they would all have done the same: in fact, this was the way they all conducted themselves whenever occasion demanded it.To hear them talk, one would imagine that such affairs as the recent exploit of Bill Bates and the Semi-drunk were constantly taking place, instead of only occurring about once in a blue moon.
Crass stood the final round of drinks, and as he evidently thought that circumstance deserved to be signalized in some special manner, he proposed the following toast, which was drunk with enthusiasm:
`To hell with the man, May he never grow fat, What carries two faces, Under one 'at.'
Rushton & Co.did a lot of work that summer.They did not have many big jobs, but there were a lot of little ones, and the boy Bert was kept busy running from one to the other.He spent most of his time dragging a handcart with loads of paint, or planks and steps, and seldom went out to work with the men, for when he was not taking things out to the various places where the philanthropists were working, he was in the paintshop at the yard, scraping out dirty paint-pots or helping Crass to mix up colours.Although scarcely anyone seemed to notice it, the boy presented a truly pitiable spectacle.He was very pale and thin.Dragging the handcart did not help him to put on flesh, for the weather was very hot and the work made him sweat.
His home was right away on the other side of Windley.It took him more than three-quarters of an hour to walk to the shop, and as he had to be at work at six, that meant that he had to leave home at a few minutes past five every morning, so that he always got up about half past four.
He was wearing a man's coat - or rather jacket - which gave the upper part of his body a bulky appearance.The trousers were part of a suit of his own, and were somewhat narrowly cut, as is the rule with boys'
cheap ready-made trousers.These thin legs appearing under the big jacket gave him a rather grotesque appearance, which was heightened by the fact that all his clothes, cap, coat, waistcoat, trousers and boots, were smothered with paint and distemper of various colours, and there were generally a few streaks of paint of some sort or other upon his face, and of course his hands - especially round the fingernails -were grimed with it.But the worst of all were the dreadful hobnailed boots: the leather of the uppers of these was an eighth of an inch thick, and very stiff.Across the fore part of the boot this hard leather had warped into ridges and valleys, which chafed his feet, and made them bleed.The soles were five-eighths of an inch thick, covered with hobnails, and were as hard and inflexible and almost as heavy as iron.These boots hurt his feet dreadfully and made him feel very tired and miserable, for he had such a lot of walking to do.He used to be jolly glad when dinner-time came, for then he used to get out of sight in some quiet spot and lie down for the whole hour.His favourite dining-place was up in the loft over the carpenter's shop, where they stored the mouldings and architraves.No one ever came there at that hour, and after he had eaten his dinner he used to lie down and think and rest.
He nearly always had an hour for dinner, but he did not always have it at the same time: sometimes he had it at twelve o'clock and sometimes not till two.It all depended upon what stuff had to be taken to the job.
Often it happened that some men at a distant job required some material to use immediately after dinner, and perhaps Crass was not able to get it ready till twelve o'clock, so that it was not possible to take it before dinner-time, and if Bert left it till after dinner the men would be wasting their time waiting for it: so in such cases he took it there first and had his dinner when he came back.
Sometimes he got back about half past twelve, and it was necessary for him to take out another lot of material at one o'clock.
In such a case he `charged' half an hour overtime on his time sheet -he used to get twopence an hour for overtime.
Sometimes Crass sent him with a handcart to one job to get a pair of steps or tressels, or a plank, or some material or other, and take them to another job, and on these occasions it was often very late before he was able to take his meals.Instead of getting his breakfast at eight, it was often nearly nine before he got back to the shop, and frequently he had to go without dinner until half past one or two.
Sometimes he could scarcely manage to carry the pots of paint to the jobs; his feet were so hot and sore.When he had to push the cart it was worse still, and often when knocking-off time came he felt so tired that he could scarcely manage to walk home.
But the weather was not always hot or fine: sometimes it was quite cold, almost like winter, and there was a lot of rain that summer.At such times the boy frequently got wet through several times a day as he went from one job to another, and he had to work all the time in his wet clothes and boots, which were usually old and out of repair and let in the water.
One of the worst jobs that he had to do was when a new stock of white lead came in.This stuff came in wooden barrels containing two hundredweight, and he used to have to dig it out of these barrels with a trowel, and put it into a metal tank, where it was kept covered with water, and the empty barrels were returned to the makers.
When he was doing this work he usually managed to get himself smeared all over with the white lead, and this circumstance, and the fact that he was always handling paint or some poisonous material or other was doubtless the cause of the terrible pains he often had in his stomach -pains that sometimes caused him to throw himself down and roll on the ground in agony.
