A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'Things seem to be getting pretty low with us all. I wish there could be a change,' continued Mary.

'How can there be, while the masters and the Unions are at loggerheads?' he asked. 'Us men be between the two, and between the two we come to the ground. It's like sitting on two stools at once.'

Mary proceeded to the shop where jelly was sold, an oilman's, bought a sixpenny pot, and took it back to Mrs. Darby's, handing it in at the door. 'Why did you do it, Mary? You cannot afford it.'

'Yes, I can. Give it to Willy, with my love.'

'He will only be out of a world of care, if God does take him,' sighed Mary to herself, as she bent her steps homeward. 'Oh, father!' she continued aloud, encountering John Baxendale at their own gate, 'I wish this sad state of things could be ended. There's the poor little Darbys worse instead of better. They are all lying in one room, down with fever.'

'God help us if fever should come!' was the reply of John Baxendale.

'It is not catching fever yet. They have given up their top chambers, and are all sleeping in that back room. Poor Willie craved for a bit of jelly, and Mrs. Darby could not get it him.'

'Better crave for that than for worse things,' returned John Baxendale. 'I am just a walking about here, because I can't bear to stop indoors. I can't pay the rent, and the things must go.'

'No, father, they need not. He said if you would get up two pounds towards it, he would give time for the rest. If——'

'Two pounds!' ejaculated John Baxendale, 'where am I to get two pounds from? Borrow of them that have been provident, and so are better off, in this distress, than me? No, that I never will.'