Page:Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.djvu/210

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was the paint shop. At one end was a fireplace without a grate but with an iron bar fixed across the blackened chimney for the purpose of suspending pails or pots over the fire, which was usually made of wood on the hearthstone. All round the walls of the shop—which had once been whitewashed but were now covered with smears of paint of every colour where the men had 'rubbed out' their brushes—were rows of shelves, filled with kegs of paint. In front of the window was a long bench covered with an untidy litter of dirty paint pots including several earthenware mixing vessels or mortars, the sides of these being thickly coated with dried paint. Scattered about the stone floor were a number of dirty pails, either empty or containing stale whitewash; and standing on a sort of low platform or shelf at one end of the shop were four large round tanks fitted with taps and labelled 'Boiled Oil', 'Turps', 'Linseed Oil' and 'Turps Substitute.' The lower parts of the walls were discoloured with moisture. The atmosphere was cold and damp and foul with the sickening odours of the poisonous materials.

It was in this place that Bert—the apprentice—spent most of his time cleaning out pots and pails, during slack periods when there were no jobs going on outside.

In the middle of the shop, under a two armed gas pendant, was another table or bench, also thickly coated with old dried paint, and by the side of this were two large stands on which some of the lathes of the venetian blinds belonging to 'The Cave,' which Crass and Slyme were painting—piecework—in their spare time, were hanging up to dry. The remainder of the lathes were leaning against the walls or piled in stacks on the table.

Crass shivered with cold as he lit the two gas jets. 'Make a bit of a fire, Alf,' he said, 'while I gets the colour ready.'

Slyme went outside and presently returned with his arms full of old wood, which he smashed up and threw into the fireplace; then he took an empty paint pot and filled it with turpentine from the big tank and emptied it over the wood. Amongst the pots on the mixing bench he found one full of old paint, and he threw this over the wood also, and in a few minutes he had made a roaring fire.

Meantime, Crass had prepared the paint and brushes and had taken down the lathes from the drying frames. The two men now proceeded with the painting of the blinds, working 198