But with Aunt’s great loss the heaps went unpicked. I should have liked to go out into them. I should like to have got myself all togged up and set forth with Tummis beside me. We were all of us Iremonger children to be very well dressed when we went out. We wore new boiled collars and starched shirts, and perfectly tied black bows, our suits were cleaned and pressed, our top hats were dusted, and white twill gloves were placed upon our hands by a servant. We must always be properly dressed to go out into the heaps, it was a house rule, it was important to show respect to the heaps, for the heaps, as we were endlessly reminded, had made us what we were. And what we found out there we must hand over to our seniors who accepted these objects and put them in piles to be taken back to the city and resold, or to be crushed or boiled down or stripped bare and made into something else. So many things were to be used again. For as long as the weather allowed it we were to sort in the heaps, but not to go too far, for if we waded out too far for safety then we might not get back in time if the wind got up, or some terrible gas escaped from down below. Many cousins had been lost deep in the heaps, my senior Cousin Rippit among them. He was Grandfather’s favourite, Rippit was, he went out one day into the heaps with his body servant and he never came back. And many more servants besides had been lost out there, taken by surprise by some wave of objects crushing down upon them, or having climbed too high and plunging down deep, deep, deep. It was a wonderful danger. How I should have loved to wade further, to be out of my depth, to feel the heap deep beneath me, cold and enormous. Out in the heaps, there were such things, things from far beyond our home, things from other lives. So we sifted and found for the family and brought things back, lugged the bits and pieces over to the Iremonger walls, and took them inside for salvage. Woe betide the Iremonger child that came back clean from a morning or afternoon spent out in the heaps. Our clothes were most carefully inspected at the end of a sifting day, our gloves must be black, our shirts thick with grime, our top hats dented or ripped, but not missing, our knees bruised and bloody, and our snot full of dirt. If we were in the least clean or unscuffed we were beaten.