Brown was almost beside himself with anger when he heard it. He swore he would be the death of Rutter for locking up his girl, his Annie, who was the best girl in London, and would not hurt a fly unless she was angry.
"That's it, Brown," said his neighbour Chaplin, who had undertaken to bring him to reason over the matter, "she must have lost her temper, as you say, and that always makes matters worse."
Fortunately for Brown, the policeman who came to bring him the bad news was a reasonable man, and his new friends the Chaplins were quite ready to say a good word for the girl, so that he was at length persuaded to go to bed without going to Rutter's or fighting the policeman. This in itself was a new experience; for Brown to control himself under such provocation was something he had never dreamed of doing before, and it was not easy to get him to do it now.
It was for the "little un who was ill," he declared, that he did not knock the policeman down when he came to tell him of it. But Annie would not have her frightened, he knew, and so for her sake, he was quiet, and promised not to go out until he went to the police court to hear the charge.
To keep him under due control, Chaplin agreed to lose his chance of getting a job in the morning and go with him, and it was well he did. For in spite of his lameness, he would certainly have struck at the man who by his evidence had got his girl committed to prison for a month. Chaplin had spoken to him before they went in to the magistrate, asking him to do what he could for her, but instead of saying a word to get a mitigation of the sentence, he did all he could to prejudice the magistrate's mind against her, saying he would make an example of her that it might be a warning to others.
So poor Annie was sent to prison for a month, and Rutter went off to work at the docks vexed that the sentence was not more severe, and that he would lose a part of his day's pay over the matter.
"If I could only get to work," muttered Brown between his set teeth. "He shall pay for it yet. My poor girl sha'n't suffer for nothing."
Annie had contrived to say a word to her father and Chaplin too.
"Ask Winny to read to him sometimes," she said with the tears rolling down her cheeks, for to be parted from her father was the hardest part of this going to prison.
Everybody cried shame on Rutter as he left. And Chaplin felt glad that Brown was still much too lame to go to work, for in his present mood, he would most likely have got himself into fresh trouble over the matter.