Mrs. Chaplin, having failed to find her husband close at hand, put on her bonnet to go to the mission room, for she thought he might be doing something for Miss Lavender, as there was always so much going on. But as she hurried down the street, tying her bonnet strings as she went along, a neighbour asked: "Are you looking for your husband, Mrs. Chaplin?"
"Yes. Have you seen him? I want him at once."
"You'll find him down by the dock gates, I think," replied her friend; "he was there a few minutes ago."
"Thank you," called Mrs. Chaplin, and she hurried along the street as fast as she could, for fear her husband should be gone before she should find him.
But as soon as she came within sight of the gates, she saw him talking to a man on the opposite side of the road. Her business was of too much importance, she thought, to brook any delay, and so she went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Wait a minute, mother," he said, turning to the stranger again and resuming his talk in an undertone.
She waited a minute, but not more, and then she went to her husband again. "You must come home at once," she said a little sharply, for she did not like to be put off for a stranger like this.
Chaplin looked at her anxiously. "Is anybody ill?" he asked.
"No, no, it isn't that; but we've had a letter from Annie Brown, and she says there is constant work for you in the country if you like to go and see about it."
This would make him give up his talk with the stranger and go home with her, she thought. She had not meant to tell him so quickly, but she wanted to get him away, and thought that this would do it, if everything else failed.