he pail of whitewash and set it down again noisily.

'I think we'd better 'ave the steps and the plank over this side,
Easton,' he said in a loud voice.

'Yes. I think that'll be the best way,' replied Easton.

While they were arranging their scaffold to do the ceiling Crass
arrived on the landing. He made no remark at first, but walked into
the room to see how many ceilings they had done.

'You'd better look alive, you chaps, he said as he went downstairs
again. 'If we don't get these ceilings finished by dinner-time,
Nimrod's sure to ramp.'

'All right,' said Harlow, gruffly. 'We'll bloody soon slosh 'em over.'

'Slosh' was a very suitable word; very descriptive of the manner in
which the work was done. The cornices of the staircase ceilings were
enriched with plaster ornaments. These ceilings were supposed to have
been washed off, but as the men who were put to do that work had not
been allowed sufficient time to do it properly, the crevices of the
ornaments were still filled up with old whitewash, and by the time
Harlow and Easton had 'sloshed' a lot more whitewash on to them they
were mere formless unsightly lumps of plaster. The 'hands' who did the
'washing off' were not to blame. They had been hunted away from the
work before it was half done.

While Harlow and Easton were distempering these ceiling, Philpot and
the other hands were proceeding with the painting in different parts of
the inside of the house, and Owen, assisted by Bert, was getting on
with the work in the drawing-room, striking chalk lines and measuring
and setting out the different panels.

There were no 'political' arguments that day at dinner-time, to the
disappointment of Crass, who was still waiting for an opportunity to
produce the Obscurer cutting. After dinner, when the others had all
gone back to their work, Philpot unobtrusively returned to the kitchen
and gathered up the discarded paper wrappers in which some of the men
had brought their food. Spreading one of these open, he shook the
crumbs from the others upon it. In this way and by picking up
particles of bread from the floor, he collected a little pile of crumbs
and crusts. To these he added some fragments that he had left from his
own dinner. He then took the parcel upstairs and opening one of the
windows threw the crumbs on to the roof of the portico. He had
scarcely closed the window when two starlings fluttered down and began
to eat. Philpot watching them