lest they should lose their
employment or customers.

Chapter 44

The Beano

Now and then a transient gleam of sunshine penetrated the gloom in
which the lives of the philanthropists were passed. The cheerless
monotony was sometimes enlivened with a little innocent merriment.
Every now and then there was a funeral which took Misery and Crass away
for the whole afternoon, and although they always tried to keep the
dates secret, the men generally knew when they were gone.

Sometimes the people in whose houses they were working regaled them
with tea, bread and butter, cake or other light refreshments, and
occasionally even with beer--very different stuff from the petrifying
liquid they bought at the Cricketers for twopence a pint. At other
places, where the people of the house were not so generously disposed,
the servants made up for it, and entertained them in a similar manner
without the knowledge of their masters and mistresses. Even when the
mistresses were too cunning to permit of this, they were seldom able to
prevent the men from embracing the domestics, who for their part were
quite often willing to be embraced; it was an agreeable episode that
helped to vary the monotony of their lives, and there was no harm done.

It was rather hard lines on the philanthropists sometimes when they
happened to be working in inhabited houses of the better sort. They
always had to go in and out by the back way, generally through the
kitchen, and the crackling and hissing of the poultry and the joints of
meat roasting in the ovens, and the odours of fruit pies and tarts, and
plum puddings and sage and onions, were simply maddening. In the
back-yards of these houses there were usually huge stacks of empty
beer, stout and wine bottles, and others that had contained whisky,
brandy or champagne.

The smells of the delicious viands that were being prepared in the
kitchen often penetrated into the dismantled rooms that the
philanthropists were renovating, sometimes just as they were eating
their own wretched fare out of their dinner basket, and washing it down
with draughts of the cold tea or the petrifying liquid they sometimes
brought with them in bottles.

Sometimes, as has been said, the people of the house used to send up
some tea and bread and butter or cakes or other refreshments to the
workmen, but whenever Hunter got to know of it being done he used to
speak to the people about it and request that it be discont