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
Chaplin came home soon after four, very tired but full of eager
expectation.
How he was to go into the country decently attired had been thought of
by their friend Miss Lavender. And soon after Chaplin got home, Letty
ran in with a large bundle in her arms.
"It's new clothes for daddy," she announced, setting her burden down on
the table and beginning to untie the handkerchief.
But Mrs. Chaplin soon took it from her, for she was all eagerness to
see whether her husband had a chance of making a decent appearance at
the place he was going to. To see him once more clad like a decent
carpenter was the highest ambition of her life. Her friend knew this,
and felt that the man would stand a much better chance of success in
his new venture, if he could go down in trim, tidy clothes instead of
the poor rags he wore as a dock labourer. So she had managed to get a
decent gray suit about his size, and a clean white shirt, and a pair of
boots, so that nothing was wanting to complete his attire.
To see them all when these were laid out for inspection can better be
imagined than described. Letty danced round the table, bumping her head
against the bedstead in the process, while Winny clapped her hands, and
insisted that her father should dress himself in them at once that they
might have time to admire him in them before he went away the next day.
Then Brown must be fetched to see them, and he must walk with Letty to
the mission room for the loaf of bread that was to be given out at six
o'clock.
Never was a family so elated, for, to crown their joy, instead of
having to tramp to this new place of work as he had made up his mind to
do, one of the men brought him the price of the railway fare from the
strike committee, and a promise to look after his family until he could
send up money to take them down to him, if he was likely to stay.
When her mother went out with Letty to get something for breakfast in
the morning, Winny contrived to have a word or two with her father.
"Do you remember the talk we had a long time ago, daddy?" she said.
"Don't you know, when we talked about it first, I said God would help
us somehow, that he would help people put things right if they were
wrong?"
"Ah! My girl, I do remember something about it; but it seems a long
time ago, as you say, for so much has happened since then."
"Yes, God has been busy in a good many people's hearts. I asked him
that very night about it, and I have prayed to him every night since,
for the old way seemed wrong for everybody. Men like Rutter could not
help getting hard and cross, it seemed. But now that will be done away
at least, and the men may get a penny an hour more, and the four hours'
work a day, for they won't be able to make twenty or thirty men do the
work of sixty."
"I hope that's over, my lass, though it won't make the difference to us
I thought it would, if I get this work at my old trade."
"What would have been the difference, daddy?" asked the girl.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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