Newman muttered something about being nearly finished now, and Hunter ascended to the next landing—the attics, where the cheap man—Sawkins, the labourer—was at work. Harlow had been taken away from the attics to go on with some of the better work, so Sawkins was now working alone. He had been slogging into it like a Trojan and had done quite a lot. He had painted not only the sashes of the window, but also a large part of the glass, and when doing the skirting he had included part of the floor, sometimes an inch, sometimes half an inch.
The paint was of a dark drab colour and the surface of the newly painted doors bore a strong resemblance to corduroy cloth, and from the bottom corners of nearly every panel there was trickling down a large tear, as if the doors were weeping for the degenerate condition of the decorative arts. But these tears caused no throb of pity in the bosom of Misery: neither did the corduroy-like surface of the work grate upon his feelings. He perceived them not. He saw only that there was a Lot of Work done and his soul was filled with rapture as he reflected that the man who had accomplished all this was paid only fivepence an hour. At the same time it would never do to let Sawkins know that he was satisfied with the progress made, so he said:
“I don’t want you to stand too much over this up ’ere, you know, Sawkins. Just mop it over anyhow, and get away from it as quick as you can.”
“All right, sir,” replied Sawkins, wiping the sweat from his brow as Misery began crawling downstairs again.
“Where’s Harlow got to, then?” he demanded of Philpot. “’E wasn’t ’ere just now, when I came up.”
“’E’s gorn downstairs, sir, out the back,” replied Joe, jerking his thumb over his shoulder and winking at Hunter. “’E’ll be back in ’arf a mo.” And indeed at that moment Harlow was just coming upstairs again.
“’Ere, we can’t allow this kind of thing in workin’ hours, you know.” Hunter bellowed. “There’s plenty of time for that in the dinner hour!”
Nimrod now went down to the drawing-room, which Easton and Owen had been painting. He stood here deep in thought for some time, mentally comparing the quantity of work done by the two men in this room with that done by Sawkins in the attics. Misery was not a painter himself: he was a carpenter, and he thought but little of the difference in the quality of the work: to him it was all about the same: just plain painting.
“I believe it would pay us a great deal better,” he thought to himself, “if we could get hold of a few more lightweights like Sawkins.” And with his mind filled with this reflection he shortly afterwards sneaked stealthily from the house.