The seed she sowed : $b A tale of the great dock strike.Leslie, Emma
General
The seed she sowed : $b A tale of the great dock strike.
Leslie, Emma
Docks -- England -- London -- Juvenile fiction; London (England) -- Juvenile fiction; Strikes and lockouts -- Juvenile fiction
The coming of Annie Brown's letter every week came to be looked forward
to as the red-letter day of the seven, for besides the words of
cheerful hope the girl always sent herself, it often contained a kindly
message and a few pence from some of her fellow-workers.
But one day there came a letter with news that set the little household
in a quiver of excitement.
"My master wants a carpenter," she wrote, "a man who can turn his hand
to anything—make boxes, put up shelves, or build a shed. I told him
about Winny's father, and about Winny too, and he says if he would
not mind living in the country, and could do the work, there would be
steady wages for him all the year round."
"Mother, mother, what does it mean?" asked Letty when she heard the
letter read, while Winny lay with clasped hands and shining eyes, too
deeply moved to utter her thoughts to anyone but God, in the swift
uprising of thanksgiving for this fresh proof of his love.
"Letty, we must go and find father!" exclaimed Mrs. Chaplin, as soon as
she could find her tongue. "Mr. Brown, do you know where he is?" she
exclaimed turning to him, for he had brought the letter and still stood
looking from one to the other, for he knew that to get work in the
country had long been his friend's wish for the sake of poor Winny.
He shook his head to Mrs. Chaplin's question, and turning to the
invalid on the couch, he said: "Well, what do you think of it, my dear?"
"Oh, I am so glad!" she replied. "It was kind of Annie to think of
father and send to tell him."
"I wouldn't own her for my 'little un' again if she didn't do all she
could for you, Winny," he replied. "But we shall miss you, my dear; we
shall all miss you. But look here, if you hadn't give my gal the chance
you did, why she couldn't have done this for you, so you see after
all, it's just your own kindness coming back to you again. The seed
you sowed is just bearing the right kind of fruit. That's what it is,
my lass, you may depend upon that. We heard something like it down at
the mission-hall the other day, when Miss Lavender give us that tea.
She stood up afterwards and warned us against losing our patience or
our temper, telling us in good plain words that the seed we sowed would
bring the same kind of fruit to us."
"I wish I could have heard Miss Lavender speak like that," said Winny
with glowing cheeks.
The girl almost worshipped her teacher, and now, as the thought crossed
her mind that if her father got this work in the country, it would
separate her from this dear friend, the tears rose to her eyes tears of
regret this time, not of thankfulness and she wondered how she could
have forgotten for a moment what going to live in the country would
mean to her.
Meanwhile Letty had gone one way and her mother another in search of
Chaplin, to tell him the good news. But they both came back in the
course of a quarter of an hour to see if he had returned, as neither of
them had been able to find him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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