Other men hauled handcarts piled high with bricks and building stone or carried grinding wheels on frayed leather harnesses, calling out in roughened voices, “Knives to grind!” as they wandered from shop to doorstep. Boys ran urgent errands, clutching baskets of vegetables and heavy stacks of newspapers, or trundled rickety wheelbarrows spilling over with piles of red, coarse brick dust which they sold in little sackfuls. One boy jogged along with a ferret in his arms, leading a bright-eyed spaniel on a worn leather leash.
“Good grief, is that a pet ferret?” Skeeter turned to stare.
Malcolm followed his glance. “Not a pet. That boy’s a rat-catcher. `You maun have a ferret, to catch a rat,’ “ he added in what sounded suspiciously like a quotation. “He’ll spend the day over in the better parts of town, de-ratting some rich woman’s house. The ferret chases them out and the spaniel kills the sneaky little beasts.”
“And the boy gets paid a small fortune by some hysterical housewife,” Skeeter guessed.
Margo shook her head. “More likely by some frantic housekeeper who doesn’t want to lose her place because rats have broken into the cellar or littered in the best linens.”
“There is that,” Skeeter admitted as the boy dodged past, heading west. Then he spotted a long, shallow wooden trough where girls appeared to be dunking handfuls of dried leaves into stinking dye. “What in the world are they doing?”
“Dying tea leaves,” Malcolm said drolly.
“Dying them? What for?”
Margo chuckled. “There’s fortunes to made in the tea recycling business. Housekeepers in wealthy households sell used tea leaves for a tidy sum, then girls in the tea trade dye the leaves so they look new and sell them in the poorer parts of town.”