And I'm up and at it, before washing, at
daylight. But I was a carpenter and housepainter first.
Well, it had been a long, close day, and I was very dirty and tired,
but with the energy and restlessness of healthy, happy tiredness when
work is unfinished. But I was out of two-inch nails, and the shops
were shut.
Then it struck me to start up the copper and have a real warm bath
after my own heart and ideas. The bathroom is outside, next the
wash-house and copper. There were plenty of splinters and ends of
softwood that were mine by right of purchase and labour. My landlady
is, and always has been, sensitive on the subject of firewood. She'll
buy anything else to make the house comfortable and beautiful. She
has been known to buy a piano for one of her nieces and burn rubbish
in the stove the same day. I knew she was uneasy about the softwood
odds and ends, but I couldn't help that--she'd still be sentimental
about them if she had a stack of firewood as big as the house.
There's at least one thing that most folk hate to buy--mine's
boot-laces or bone studs, so long as I can make pins or inked string
do.
I put a bucket of water in the copper, started a fire under that sent
sparks out of the wash-house flue at an alarming rate, filled the
copper to the brim, and, in the absence of a lid, covered it with a
piece of flattened galvanized iron I had.
I tacked the side edge of a strip of canvas to the matchboard wall
along over the inner edge of the bath, fastened a short piece of
gas-pipe to the outer edge, with pieces of string through holes made
in it, and let it hang down over the bath, leaving a hole at the head
for my head and shoulders.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66