The next morning my arm still ached, one of the Iremongers looked at the spot where Mrs Piggott had poked that thing into me and said I was doing well, that there was barely any mark to speak of. In truth, it did not worry me so much as the bites on my leg. After breakfast, when we lined up for inspection, I heard the steam engine howling, heading back towards London, back to everything I knew. My duties were described to me, I was to clean certain of the fireplaces in the upstairs of the house. This I learnt was a privileged position, far better than being sent out into the heaps. They tried me out on the below-stairs fireplaces to begin with, so that I might get the hang of them before I was sent upstairs in the night-time when the family had gone to bed. They watched over me and made many comments. I had a wire brush and buckets and shovels and a hunk of lead to scrub the grates with. I had brushes and must carry with me also stacks of old London newspapers that I must roll into balls and fill the fireplace with after I’d cleaned it and then I must put some sticks on top of the paper and a few pieces of coal on top of the sticks. They were very particular about how it was to be done. Any part-burnt bits of coal were to be put back on the fire to be used another night, any large cinders were to go in one metal bucket, and the remainder of the ash was to be sifted into the largest bucket to be collected downstairs in the ashroom, where all the ash of the house was gathered up. It was a great sooty place and all who worked in it were smudged and begrimed, and coughed mightily, and had weeping eyes, and black streaks beneath their noses, but were cheerful and thankful to be in the house. Better to be inside, they said, than out beyond in the heaps.