"Mother, mother, don't cry!" exclaimed Winny, trying to stretch out her arms so as to be able to reach her. "Mother dear, you forget that God knows all about how bad things are just now, and can send us the rent ready for next Monday, though it is Thursday night and we haven't got much towards it."
"We haven't anything," sobbed the poor woman. "We shall want all this money for bread and tea and a bit of dinner to-morrow."
Winny was silent for a minute or two, but at last she said: "Letty might get some soup at the mission-hall for a penny a pint, and that would be cheaper than anything else for dinner."
"And I can get my dinner what I want at the food truck outside the dock gates for a penny," remarked her husband.
Poor Mrs. Chaplin winced. She had been thinking a good deal to-day of their past comfort and respectability, and to her it seemed like charity to take advantage of these cheap food depots, and her tears flowed afresh at the thought. Still, if the shilling was to be put away for the rent, it was the only thing they could do with the sixpence, for upon no other plan could they hope to get sufficient for them all to have two meals within twenty-four hours.
It was some comfort to her to think that there was something dropped into the rent-box that stood in the corner drawer, and so she wiped away her tears and began to prepare for going to bed.
This was an elaborate process, for the bed had to be let down out of what looked like a wardrobe cupboard during the day, but now disclosed bed-clothes, beds, and pillows, to say nothing of a long curtain that was rolled together at the top, and when let down formed a partition between the two beds, the girls' being made up at the other end of the room.
There was not much room to move about when the two beds were got into working order for the night, but then nobody wanted to do more than creep into bed.
When they were ready, Chaplin lifted Winny from her couch to the opposite side of the room and Letty helped her take off her clothes, and very soon three out of the four were sound asleep.
But for Winny there was very little rest that night. Her father had set her thinking in a fashion that was not pleasant. How could it be that poor men like her father should not be able to put, as he said, his heart into his work, and do it, as she knew God would have all work done, intelligently and heartily. This was certainly the way he would have all men work, and for things to be managed so that men could not or would not do this, was to degrade them to the level of beasts of burden, and certainly ought to be altered somehow.