The week’s wash was hanging across the apartment, and gave rather a slovenly aspect to the room, not otherwise peculiar for its untidyness; against the wall were pasted some children’s “characters,” which his second son, who is at the coal-shed, has a taste for, and which, as the “shoreman” observed, “is better than sweet-stuff for him, at all events.”
A little terrier was jumping playfully about the room, a much more acceptable companion than the bull-dog whose acquaintance we had been invited to make (in the same court) by the “rat-killer.”
The furniture and appointments of the “parlour” were extremely humble—not to say meagre in their character. After some trouble in getting sufficiently lucid answers, the following was the result:—
“There are not so many rats about as there used to be—not a five-hundredth part so many. I’ve seen long ago twenty or thirty in a row near where the slaughter-houses are, and that like. I ketch them all down the shores. I run after them and pick them up with my hand, and I take my lantern with me.
“I have caught rats these six or seven years. When the money got to be lowered, I took to ketching on them. One time I used to take a dog with me, when I worked down St. John’s-wood way.
“They fetches all prices, does rats; some I get threepence a-piece for, some twopence, some twopence-halfpenny—’cordin’ who has ’em.
“I works on the shores, and our time to leave off is four. I comes home and gets my tea, and if there’s sale for them, why I goes out and ketches a few rats. When I goes out I can ketch a dozen; but, years ago, I could ketch two or three dozen without going so far, and that shows there’s not so many now about.
“I finds some difficulty in ketching on them. If they gets into the drain you can’t get ’em. Where the drains lay low to the shore it’s most difficult, but where the drain is about two feet and a-half from the shore you gets a better chance.
“Three or four dozen I used to ketch, but I haven’t ketched any this last two or three weeks. In this hot weather people don’t like to be in a room where ‘killing’ is going on; but in the winter time a man will have his pint of beer and see a little sport that way. Three or four year ago I did ketch a good many; there was a sale for ’em. I could go and ketch two dozen in three hours, and that sooner than I can do a dozen now. It’s varmint as wants to be destroyed.
“Rats’ll turn round when they finds theirselves beat, and sometimes fly at your hand. Sometimes I’ve got bit—not very badly, though. To tell the truth, I don’t like it. When they grip, they do holt so tight before they’ll let go.