six o'clock
The Good Old Summer-time All through the summer the crowd of ragged-trousered philanthropists continued to toil and sweat at their noble and unselfish task of making money for Mr Rushton . Painting the outsides of houses and shops , washing off and distempering ceilings , stripping old paper off walls , painting and papering rooms and staircases , building new rooms or other additions to old houses or business premises , digging up old drains , repairing leaky roofs and broken windows . Their zeal and enthusiasm in the good cause was unbounded . They were supposed to start work at six o'clock , but most of them were usually to be found waiting outside the job at about a quarter to that hour , sitting on the kerbstones or the doorstep . Their operations extended all over the town : at all hours of the day they were to be seen either going or returning from ` jobs ' , carrying ladders , planks , pots of paint , pails of whitewash , earthenware , chimney pots , drainpipes , lengths of guttering , closet pans , grates , bundles of wallpaper , buckets of paste , sacks of cement , and loads of bricks and mortar . Quite a common spectacle -- for gods and men -- was a procession consisting of a handcart loaded up with such materials being pushed or dragged through the public streets by about half a dozen of these Imperialists in broken boots and with battered , stained , discoloured bowler hats , or caps splashed with paint and whitewash ; their stand-up collars dirty , limp and crumpled , and their rotten second-hand misfit clothing saturated with sweat and plastered with mortar . Even the assistants in the grocers ' and drapers ' shops laughed and ridiculed and pointed the finger of scorn at them as they passed .