"Unwind all this coil, do you mean?" said the foreman, aghast at the proposal.
"There is nothing else for it that I can see," answered Brown. "To let it pass as it is will never do, for some bad accident may be caused through that bit of scamped work. It's a nasty job, I know, but I should not like to think that the whole station here might come to grief, and lives be lost, for the sake of a day or two's hard work. I will be as quick about it as I can, and say nothing to anybody, for the sake of Collins himself."
"All right. I see you understand how matters are. You had better have one of the boys to give you a hand; but you need not let him know why we are having it undone."
"You may trust me for keeping a still tongue over the whole matter. Collins had a pretty peck of trouble last week," added Brown, "and I expect it was thinking of his wife bad in bed that made him a bit slack with his job."
"It was the whisky, more likely," said the foreman, sharply,—"I hear he was bringing it in as well as being at 'The Blue Posts' every night—that upset him, and I was to blame that I did not look after him more sharply."
The foreman took care that there was no further remissness on his part, and kept a pretty close watch on Brown and the way he worked.
He soon found, however, that the careful, steady way this man did his work was not likely to lead to further trouble, and when the bit of scamped work was put right, Brown proved to be as quick and skilful as ever Collins had been, and at the end of the week Brown learned, to his great satisfaction, that he might consider himself permanently engaged for this class of work, which would mean higher wages and less laborious though more highly skilled tasks for the future. This, perhaps, would mean more to Brown than any other man in the factory, for the long illness of the previous year had left a lingering weakness that hard work had made very trying occasionally. Now quickness of eye, steadiness and deftness of hands, rather than actual strength, was what would be required of him, and he had carefully trained both eyes and hands whenever he had an opportunity, in the hope that some day they might prove useful both to himself and others. The careful mending of the children's shoes at home had been part of this training. The repairing of his wife's sewing-machine now and then had also helped, so that now his fingers could handle the more delicate parts of the work as neatly and deftly as any man in the factory, and he was reaping the fruit of his long and painstaking labours.
When Selina met her father that Saturday afternoon, she was so full of her story about Eliza that she never noticed that he was looking more grave than usual; but Mrs. Brown saw that there was something unusual the moment her eyes met those of her husband.
"What is the matter?" she asked anxiously, as he came in.
"Nothing but what will keep," he said pleasantly.