He crawled stealthily over the house but was disappointed in his quest, for everyone he saw was hard at work.

Upstairs he noticed that the door of one of the rooms was closed.
Old Joe Philpot had been working in this room all day, washing off the old whitewash from the ceiling and removing the old papers from the walls with a broad bladed, square topped knife called a stripper.
Although it was only a small room, Joe had had to tear into the work pretty hard all the time, for the ceiling seemed to have had two or three coats of whitewash without ever having been washed off, and there were several thicknesses of paper on the walls.

The difficulty of removing these papers was increased by the fact that there was a dado which had been varnished.

In order to get this off it had been necessary to soak it several times with strong soda water, and although Joe was as careful as possible he had not been able to avoid getting some of this stuff on his fingers.

The result was that his nails were all burnt and discoloured and the flesh round them cracked and bleeding.