'I don't know, father,' returned the child. And his voice was fainter than ever.
Mrs. Darby pulled her husband's ear close to her lips. 'When the boy's dead, you'll wish you had cared for him more than for the Trades' Unions; and worked for him.'
The words told upon the man. Perhaps for the first time he had fully realized to his imagination the moment when he should see his boy lying dead before him. 'I will work,' he exclaimed. 'Willy, boy, father will go and get work; and he'll soon bring you home something good to eat, as he used to.' Willy's hot lips parted with a pleasant smile of response; his blue eyes glistened brightly. Robert Darby bent his rough, unshaven face, and took a kiss from the child's smooth one. 'Yes, my boy; father will work.'
He went out, bending his steps towards Slippery Sam's—who, by the way, had latterly tried to exact the title of 'Mr. Shuck.' There was a code of honour—as they regarded it—amidst these operatives of the Hunters, to do nothing underhanded. That is, not to resume work without first speaking to the Unions' man, Sam Shuck—as was mentioned in the case of Baxendale. It happened that Mr. Shuck was standing in the strip of garden before his house, carrying on a wordy war over the palings with Mrs. Quale, when Darby came up. Peter Quale had of course been locked out with the rest, but with the first hour that Mr. Hunter's yard was opened, Peter returned to his work. He did not belong to the Trades' Unions—he never had belonged to them and never would; therefore, he was a free man. Strange to say, he was left to do as he liked in peace; somehow the Union did not care to interfere with Peter Quale—for one thing, he occupied a better position in the yard than most of the men. Peter pursued his own course quietly—going to his work and returning from it, saying little to the malcontents of Daffodil's Delight. Not so Mrs. Quale; she exercised her tongue upon them whenever she got the chance. Her motive was a good one: she was at heart sorry for the privation at present existing in Daffodil's Delight, and would have liked to shame the men into going to work again.
'Now, Robert Darby! how are them children of your'n?' began she. 'Starved out yet?'
'Next door to it,' was Darby's answer.
'And whose is the fault?' she went on. 'If I had children, and my husband wouldn't work to keep 'em out of their graves, through getting some nasty mistaken crotchet in his head, and holding out when the work was going a-begging, I'd go before a magistrate and see if I couldn't have the law of him.'
'You'd do a good many things if you wore the breeches,' interposed Sam Shuck, with a sneer; 'but you don't, you know.'
'You be wearing whole breeches now, which you get out of the blood and marrow of the poor misguided men,' retorted Mrs. Quale. 'They won't last out whole for ever, Slippery Sam.'