ANNIE went to wander in cool green country lanes or pleasant sunny meadows, while Winny was left to pant and stifle in the heat of those June days, sometimes too tired and languid to eat the bread and dripping, which was all her mother could afford to get for her dinner five days out of the seven. But she never regretted the sacrifice she had made.
After the first week in July, the weather changed and was much cooler. Rain fell nearly every day, and work at the docks seemed to grow slacker, and the struggle for bare existence more keen among the workers.
But there was something more than this going on among the men, Mrs. Chaplin felt sure. She forgot her vexation about Annie Brown having Winny's holiday ticket in the uneasiness she felt about her husband.
There was a change in Chaplin that his wife and others could not help noticing.
He gradually became more alert, and carried himself less slouchingly as he walked. He stood upright and gazed round him as though he had the right to look up at the sky, and he was not the only one either that put on a brisker air. Brown began to talk in a louder and more aggressive tone, and often spoke of what they heard at the dock gates, with sundry hints and whispers that "people would hear something by and by."
"It's neither more nor less than a strike that they're thinking of, I do believe," said poor Mrs. Chaplin with a groan when she was talking to her friend Mrs. Rutter about these varied signs of some stir being on foot among the men.
"Strike? Dock labourers strike? Why, I have heard my poor dear husband say they fought like wild beasts against each other to get the chance of being taken on for an hour."
"Yes, and I have heard that the foremen don't care to have too many regular hands, but prefer to have a hundred or two waiting round the gate that they can pick from whenever they want a fresh batch of hands." Mrs. Chaplin spoke resentfully, for she did not like the insinuation about her husband fighting for work like a "wild beast." "If everything was done fair and square at the docks, some would get a little more and others a good deal less," she added.
"I don't know anything about that," said Mrs. Rutter a little tartly. "But you ought to tell Chaplin not to be talked into any foolish scheme of striking for higher wages, for I can tell you this, they could get men at them gates to work for twopence an hour if they wanted 'em. I've heard my poor dear say so many a time."
Mrs. Rutter always spoke of her husband as her "poor dear" now. She had plucked up a little more spirit and did not look quite so miserable as she used to do, but still she was far from being a happy woman.