How he was to go into the country decently attired had been thought of by their friend Miss Lavender. And soon after Chaplin got home, Letty ran in with a large bundle in her arms.
"It's new clothes for daddy," she announced, setting her burden down on the table and beginning to untie the handkerchief.
But Mrs. Chaplin soon took it from her, for she was all eagerness to see whether her husband had a chance of making a decent appearance at the place he was going to. To see him once more clad like a decent carpenter was the highest ambition of her life. Her friend knew this, and felt that the man would stand a much better chance of success in his new venture, if he could go down in trim, tidy clothes instead of the poor rags he wore as a dock labourer. So she had managed to get a decent gray suit about his size, and a clean white shirt, and a pair of boots, so that nothing was wanting to complete his attire.
To see them all when these were laid out for inspection can better be imagined than described. Letty danced round the table, bumping her head against the bedstead in the process, while Winny clapped her hands, and insisted that her father should dress himself in them at once that they might have time to admire him in them before he went away the next day.
Then Brown must be fetched to see them, and he must walk with Letty to the mission room for the loaf of bread that was to be given out at six o'clock.
Never was a family so elated, for, to crown their joy, instead of having to tramp to this new place of work as he had made up his mind to do, one of the men brought him the price of the railway fare from the strike committee, and a promise to look after his family until he could send up money to take them down to him, if he was likely to stay.
When her mother went out with Letty to get something for breakfast in the morning, Winny contrived to have a word or two with her father.
"Do you remember the talk we had a long time ago, daddy?" she said. "Don't you know, when we talked about it first, I said God would help us somehow, that he would help people put things right if they were wrong?"
"Ah! My girl, I do remember something about it; but it seems a long time ago, as you say, for so much has happened since then."
"Yes, God has been busy in a good many people's hearts. I asked him that very night about it, and I have prayed to him every night since, for the old way seemed wrong for everybody. Men like Rutter could not help getting hard and cross, it seemed. But now that will be done away at least, and the men may get a penny an hour more, and the four hours' work a day, for they won't be able to make twenty or thirty men do the work of sixty."