although he was slightly older and
taller than Frankie he could not lift the iron so often or hold it out
so long as the other, a failure that Frankie attributed to the fact
that Charley had too much tea and bread and butter instead of porridge
and milk and Parrish's Food. Charley was so upset about his lack of
strength that he arranged with Frankie to come home with him the next
day after school to see his mother about it. Mrs Linden had a flat
iron, so they gave a demonstration of their respective powers before
her. Mrs Easton being also present, by request, because Frankie said
that the diet in question was suitable for babies as well as big
children. He had been brought up on it ever since he could remember,
and it was almost as cheap as bread and butter and tea.

The result of the exhibition was that Mrs Linden promised to make
porridge for Charley and Elsie whenever she could spare the time, and
Mrs Easton said she would try it for the baby also.

Chapter 43

The Good Old Summer-time

All through the summer the crowd of ragged-trousered philanthropists
continued to toil and sweat at their noble and unselfish task of making
money for Mr Rushton.

Painting the outsides of houses and shops, washing off and distempering
ceilings, stripping old paper off walls, painting and papering rooms
and staircases, building new rooms or other additions to old houses or
business premises, digging up old drains, repairing leaky roofs and
broken windows.

Their zeal and enthusiasm in the good cause was unbounded. They were
supposed to start work at six o'clock, but most of them were usually to
be found waiting outside the job at about a quarter to that hour,
sitting on the kerbstones or the doorstep.

Their operations extended all over the town: at all hours of the day
they were to be seen either going or returning from 'jobs', carrying
ladders, planks, pots of paint, pails of whitewash, earthenware,
chimney pots, drainpipes, lengths of guttering, closet pans, grates,
bundles of wallpaper, buckets of paste, sacks of cement, and loads of
bricks and mortar. Quite a common spectacle--for gods and men--was a
procession consisting of a handcart loaded up with such materials being
pushed or dragged through the public streets by about half a dozen of
these Imperialists in broken boots and with battered, stained,
discoloured bowler hats, or caps splashed with paint and whitewash;
their stand-up collars dirty, limp and c