“I’m sixteen. Mother and I get on very well on what I earn, even though it isn’t much. Don’t you have anybody to take care of?”
“No.”
Jackson regarded Peter with astonishment.
“I should think you would be rich as a lord if you have all your money to yourself!” he exclaimed. “What on earth do you find to do with it?”
Once—and the time was not far passed, either—Peter would have laughed at the naive question; now he answered gravely:
“Oh, I am saving some of it.”
“That’s right. I can’t save a cent at present, but some time I hope to get a better salary and then I shall be able to. Now let’s go over to the other end of the room and see where they are putting the skins to soak in those big vats of water to get out the salt and dirt. That’s the first thing they do after the skins are sent into the beamhouse. You remember how stiff and hard the dry skins were when you unloaded them. Well, they are put into the great revolving wooden drums that you see overhead and are worked about in borax and water until they become soft. They are washed, too. Then after all the skins have been washed and softened they are thrown into lime and are left there until the fibre swells and the hair is loosened. The men you see with rubber gloves on are the limers. If they did not wear gloves they would get their hands burned and raw, for the lime and the chemicals used in the tan often make the hands and arms very sore.”
“But I don’t see that the skins that are tossed into the lime pits come out with the hair off,” objected Peter.
“Bless your heart—the lime does not take the hair off. The men who unhair them have to do that. They lay the wet skins out on boards and with sharp knives pull and scrape off all the white hair.”
“Why don’t they take off the brown or black hair as well?”