The poor woman went out sobbing. In spite of the house being the best furnished in the street, she was constantly being told that to have a fire these chilly evenings was waste, although it had been the custom to have one until her husband had begun to grow rich, when he had declared that such indulgence was a wilful waste.
She sat down by the few embers of the dying fire and shivered. Presently her husband went out, and she heard angry voices outside. Doubtless it was some of the tenants come to beg for further time to pay the rent, for these were constantly coming on such errands.
Just now, however, it, seemed as though they were rather noisy over it, and stones rattled against the window shutters. To her relief, the latch key was heard turning in the lock the next minute, and her husband came in. He was not a coward, but he looked white and frightened as he came into the kitchen.
"Why! What is the matter?" she asked, looking even paler than her husband.
"Oh, some of the men out there are about as foolish as you are," he said uneasily. "They actually want me to try and alter the plan upon which the work is done in the docks, as if I could do anything in it."
"But I've heard you say it wasn't a fair way of doing things," put in his wife.
"But suppose it isn't, can I alter it do you think?" he demanded, turning angrily upon her.
It was always so now. Whatever put him out of temper, he always visited it upon her, and so now, as he could not go out because of the angry crowd in the street, he vented his anger upon her, while she sat and bore it meekly but tearfully, silently wishing they were as poor now as when her husband worked in the docks, and never dreamed of being the possessor of more than a pound a week in the way of income. They had been happy and content then, and her husband could afford time to go with her to the mission service sometimes.
But all this had altered when he was made a foreman and began to buy houses of his own. Then the mission service was not good enough for them, he said, they ought to go to a church where they knew nobody, but might be thought people of importance—not that he went himself, for Sunday had to be given up to looking over accounts, and calculations about rents and repairs, and how a shilling could be put on here and there to make his houses more profitable.
The poor woman sighed as she thought of it all, while her husband grumbled on and the crowd outside seemed to grow more violent. It became plain at last that Rutter would not be able to go out again that night, and so he took off his boots and sat down in the dreary little kitchen to eat his supper of bread and cheese.