ed clinging
convulsively to the ladder and feeling so limp that he was unable to go
down any further for several minutes. When he arrived at the bottom
and the others noticed how white and trembling he was, he told them
about the pinnacle being loose, and the 'coddy' coming along just then,
they told him about it, and suggested that it should be repaired, as
otherwise it might fall down and hurt someone: but the 'coddy' was
afraid that if they reported it they might be blamed for breaking it,
and the owner might expect the firm to put it right for nothing, so
they decided to say nothing about it. The pinnacle is stilt on the
apex of the steeple waiting for a sufficiently strong wind to blow it
down on somebody's head.

When the other men heard of Easton's 'narrow shave', most of them said
that it would have served him bloody well right if he had fallen and
broken his neck: he should have refused to go up at all without a
proper scaffold. That was what THEY would have done. If Misery or the
coddy had ordered any of THEM to go up and paint the pinnacle off that
ladder, they would have chucked their tools down and demanded their
ha'pence!

That was what they said, but somehow or other it never happened that
any of them ever 'chucked their tools down' at all, although such
dangerous jobs were of very frequent occurrence.

The scamping business was not confined to houses or properties of an
inferior class: it was the general rule. Large good-class houses,
villas and mansions, the residences of wealthy people, were done in
exactly the same way. Generally in such places costly and beautiful
materials were spoilt in the using.

There was a large mansion where the interior woodwork--the doors,
windows and staircase--had to be finished in white enamel. It was
rather an old house and the woodwork needed rubbing down and filling up
before being repainted, but of course there was not time for that, so
they painted it without properly preparing it and when it was enamelled
the rough, uneven surface of the wood looked horrible: but the owner
appeared quite satisfied because it was nice and shiny. The
dining-room of the same house was papered with a beautiful and
expensive plush paper. The ground of this wall-hanging was made to
imitate crimson watered silk, and it was covered with a raised pattern
in plush of the same colour. The price marked on the back of this
paper in the pattern book was eighteen shillings a roll.