“Well, I hope it does come orf,” replied Philpot. “It’ll be a job for some poor b—rs.”
“I wonder if they’ve started anyone yet on the venetian blinds for this ’ouse?” remarked Easton after a pause.
“I don’t know,” replied Philpot.
They relapsed into silence for a while.
“I wonder what time it is?” said Philpot at length. “I don’t know ’ow you feel, but I begin to want my dinner.”
“That’s just what I was thinking; it can’t be very far off it now. It’s nearly ’arf an hour since Bert went down to make the tea. It seems a ’ell of a long morning to me.”
“So it does to me,” said Philpot; “slip upstairs and ask Slyme what time it is.”
Harlow laid his brush across the top of his paint-pot and went upstairs. He was wearing a pair of cloth slippers, and walked softly, not wishing that Crass should hear him leaving his work, so it happened that without any intention of spying on Slyme, Harlow reached the door of the room in which the former was working without being heard and, entering suddenly, surprised Slyme—who was standing near the fireplace—in the act of breaking a whole roll of wallpaper across his knee as one might break a stick. On the floor beside him was what had been another roll, now broken into two pieces. When Harlow came in, Slyme started, and his face became crimson with confusion. He hastily gathered the broken rolls together and, stooping down, thrust the pieces up the flue of the grate and closed the register.
“Wot’s the bloody game?” inquired Harlow.
Slyme laughed with an affectation of carelessness, but his hands trembled and his face was now very pale.