o 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