“Do your best, and leave the rest”

“Do your best, and leave the rest” is a short verse Polly Barker uses to steady Jerry Barker after his refusal to work on Sunday costs him a valued customer. Its meaning is practical rather than abstract: do the work one can, hold to a principle, and endure uncertainty without surrendering what matters. When events later seem to vindicate the refrain, it becomes a recurring expression of hope grounded in the couple’s difficult choices and ordinary working life.

Wording and Function

The expression is presented as a four-line rhyme, not as a long argument or a promise of immediate reward. Polly’s words move from effort to relinquishment: Jerry should do what lies within his power, while the uncertain outcome is left to time. The rhyme gives this counsel a memorable, portable form, suited to repetition at moments when the couple has little control over their prospects.

The verse’s second movement looks toward a future correction of present hardship. Its assurance that matters will come right “some day or night” does not specify when or how. That vagueness is part of its consolation: it offers patience rather than a forecast, and allows hope to persist even when there is no immediate evidence that Jerry’s decision will pay off.

The Choice That Calls Forth the Refrain

The immediate circumstance is Jerry’s refusal of a regular Sunday fare. He explains to the gentleman who wants him to drive Mrs. Briggs to church that he has taken out a six-days’ license and cannot legally accept a fare on Sunday. The gentleman suggests changing the license and offers to ensure that Jerry would not lose money. Jerry nevertheless holds to his existing arrangement and the rest that it protects.

At home, Polly makes clear what is at stake for the family. She says that even a sovereign offered every Sunday would not persuade her to return to the seven-day schedule. The couple knows from experience what it meant to have no Sundays: Jerry scarcely had time to attend to his children, and the family could not worship together or enjoy a quiet day. Their earnings are tight after the costs of oats, hay, the license, and rent, but Polly would rather struggle than return to that earlier routine. Jerry confirms that he shares her resolve, even if he could earn twice as much by giving it up.

The lost income is real, not merely hypothetical. Three weeks pass without an order from Mrs. Briggs, leaving Jerry to take jobs from the stand; the work is harder for both horse and driver. Polly’s verse appears in this interval, as encouragement amid an unresolved financial cost. Its first counsel, to do one’s best, suits the couple’s continued effort to make a living; its invitation to leave the rest names what neither of them can force: whether the customer will return.

Repetition and Reversal

The refrain gains force when the hoped-for change finally arrives. Two or three weeks later, Polly runs across the road with a lantern to tell Jerry that Mrs. Briggs has sent word asking him to drive her again. Her explanation is that other cabs have not suited the household: some drivers go too fast, others too slowly, and none is as clean as Jerry’s. The mistress wants his cab back.

Jerry responds with laughter and recalls Polly’s prediction that everything would come right some day or night. The repetition is important: the line that had helped them endure a period of lost work now describes a concrete reversal. Yet the outcome is limited and specific. Mrs. Briggs resumes hiring Jerry as often as before, but never on Sunday. The family has not gained a Sunday fare; rather, Jerry’s refusal has survived the test, and he has regained the customer on terms consistent with it.

Meaning in the Story’s Working World

The episode sets the refrain against the pressures of cab work. A license determines which days Jerry may legally take fares; the cost of keeping a cab and feeding a horse makes lost work consequential; and the need for rest is presented as part of family life, not as a luxury detached from earning a living. The verse does not erase those pressures or claim that every principled choice is immediately rewarded. It gives Polly and Jerry language for holding to a boundary while the outcome remains unknown.

The wider account of cab driving makes that boundary especially legible. Black Beauty observes that Jerry owns and drives his horse himself, and therefore has a direct interest in treating the animal well and not overworking it. By contrast, horses hired out by large cab-owners may be driven under pressure to earn enough first to meet the owner’s charge and then to support the driver. Jerry’s Sunday decision belongs to a broader contrast between a working life organized around relentless extraction and one in which rest can be defended. The verse links personal perseverance to that modest but consequential refusal.

The later return of Sunday work does not cancel the refrain’s meaning. Mrs. Briggs’s regular custom remains separate from Sunday, and the narration then introduces another occasion when Jerry has to work on that day. The expression is therefore not a rule that every Sunday will remain untouched, nor a guarantee that hardship disappears. Its durable force lies in the couple’s shared resolve, Polly’s ability to sustain it through uncertainty, and the modest fulfillment that follows: the customer returns, but Jerry does not have to abandon the rest his family has chosen to keep.