Annie came in soon after tea to thank her as well; she had her hat on and was just going out. "What a worry rent is!" she whispered as she passed Mrs. Chaplin.
They did not ask where she was going, and thought no more of the matter at that time, and a fortnight passed without anything occurring out of the usual way.
Mrs. Chaplin got more sack-making, and Brown came occasionally to listen to Winny reading. For although his foot was better, he was not able to go to work, and the neighbours knew that Annie had been compelled to carry a good many things to the pawnshop to get bread, and that the rent had not been paid, for they heard Rutter's agent threaten at last to turn them out, if the rent was not taken to him in the course of the evening.
Brown told Annie of this when she came home from work, suggesting that they had better look out for another place at once.
"What! When we are so comfortable here, and you can go and hear Winny read! No, I'll go and tell Rutter that you'll be at work again next week, and if he'll wait for the rent, we'll pay him all up in a month."
She swallowed her tea as fast as she could, and as they could not afford to burn a lamp now, she told her father to go and see the Chaplins if it got dark before she came back.
"For I may have to wait for him, you know, but I will see him this time."
She had found out where the Rutters had gone to live, and was not long walking the two miles that lay between, so that she got to her destination early in the evening, and was shown into the little back parlour where Rutter sat smoking.
"What do you want?" he said taking the pipe from his mouth as Annie went in.
He did not recognize her, and thought she might have come about a house of his that was empty.