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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Hebert Jenkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Bindle
+       Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles
+
+Author: Hebert Jenkins
+
+Release Date: September 6, 2011 [EBook #37324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BINDLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Cathy Maxam and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  MRS BINDLE
+
+  SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE
+  DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BINDLES
+
+
+
+
+  WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT
+
+
+  Ever since the success achieved by _Bindle_, Herbert Jenkins has been
+  urged to write giving Mrs. Bindle's point of view. This book is the
+  result.
+
+  Among other things, it narrates how Mrs. Bindle caught a chill, how a
+  nephew was born to her and what effect it had upon her outlook.
+
+  It tells how she encountered a bull, and what happened to the man who
+  endeavoured to take forcible possession of her home.
+
+  She is shown as breaking a strike by precipitating a lock-out, burning
+  incense to her brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, and refusing the armistice
+  that was offered.
+
+  One chapter tells of her relations with her neighbours. Another deals
+  with a musical evening she planned, and yet a third of how she caught
+  a chill and was in great fear of heaven.
+
+
+  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+    BINDLE                               2s. 6d. net.
+    THE NIGHT CLUB                       2s. 6d. net.
+    ADVENTURES OF BINDLE                 2s. 6d. net.
+    JOHN DENE OF TORONTO                 2s. 6d. net.
+    MALCOLM SAGE, DETECTIVE              2s. 6d. net.
+    PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER             2s. 6d. net.
+    THE RAIN-GIRL                        2s. 6d. net.
+    THE RETURN OF ALFRED                 2s. 6d. net.
+    THE BINDLES ON THE ROCKS             2s. 6d. net.
+    THE STIFFSONS and other stories      2s. 6d. net.
+
+
+
+
+  MRS
+  BINDLE
+
+  SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE
+  DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BINDLES
+
+  BY
+  HERBERT
+  JENKINS
+
+  HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
+  YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S S.W.1.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  _Ninth printing, completing 104,643 copies_
+
+  MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+  PURNELL AND SONS, PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  ARTHUR
+  COMPTON
+  RICKETT
+  M.A., LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                     PAGE
+
+     I. MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT                   9
+
+    II. MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY               38
+
+   III. MRS. BINDLE ENTERTAINS                  60
+
+    IV. THE COMING OF JOSEPH THE SECOND         89
+
+     V. MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE              108
+
+    VI. MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME           125
+
+   VII. MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY          150
+
+  VIII. THE SUMMER-CAMP FOR TIRED WORKERS      168
+
+    IX. MR. HEARTY ENCOUNTERS A BULL           188
+
+     X. THE COMING OF THE WHIRLWIND            209
+
+    XI. MRS. BINDLE TAKES A CHILL              237
+
+   XII. MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE        263
+
+  XIII. MRS. BINDLE'S DISCOVERY                283
+
+
+
+
+MRS BINDLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT
+
+
+I
+
+"Well! What's the matter now? Lorst your job?"
+
+With one hand resting upon the edge of the pail beside which she was
+kneeling, Mrs. Bindle looked up, challenge in her eyes. Bindle's
+unexpected appearance while she was washing the kitchen oilcloth filled
+her with foreboding.
+
+"There's a strike on at the yard," he replied in a tone which, in spite
+of his endeavour to render it casual, sounded like a confession of
+guilt. He knew Mrs. Bindle; he knew also her views on strikes.
+
+"A what?" she cried, rising to her feet and wiping her hands upon the
+coarse canvas apron that covered the skirt carefully festooned about her
+hips. "A what?"
+
+"A strike," repeated Bindle. "They give Walter 'Odson the sack, so we
+all come out."
+
+"Oh! you have, have you?" she cried, her thin lips disappearing
+ominously. "And when are you going back, I'd like to know?" She regarded
+him with an eye that he knew meant war.
+
+"Can't say," he replied, as he proceeded to fill his pipe from a tin
+tobacco-box. "Depends on the Union," he added.
+
+"The Union!" she cried with rising wrath. "I wish I had them here. I'd
+give them Union, throwing men out of work, with food the price it is.
+What's going to 'appen to us? Can you tell me that?" she demanded, her
+diction becoming a little frayed at the edges, owing to the intensity of
+her feelings.
+
+Bindle remained silent. He realised that he was faced by a crisis.
+
+"Nice thing you coming 'ome at eleven o'clock in the morning calmly
+saying you've struck," she continued angrily. "You're a lazy,
+good-for-nothing set of loafers, the whole lot of you, that's what you
+are. When you're tired of work and want a 'oliday you strike, and spend
+your time in public-'ouses, betting and drinking and swearing, and us
+women slaving morning, noon and night to keep you. Suppose I was to
+strike, what then?"
+
+She undid her canvas apron, and with short, jerky movements proceeded to
+fold and place it in the dresser-drawer. She then let down the festoons
+into which her skirt had been gathered about her inconspicuous hips.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was a sharp, hatchet-faced woman, with eyes too closely set
+together to satisfy an artist.
+
+The narrowness of her head was emphasised by the way in which her thin,
+sandy hair was drawn behind each ear and screwed tightly into a knot at
+the back.
+
+Her lips were thin and slightly marked, and when she was annoyed they
+had a tendency to disappear altogether.
+
+"How are we going to live?" she demanded. "Answer me that! You and your
+strikes!"
+
+Bindle struck a match and became absorbed in lighting his pipe.
+
+"What are you going to do for food?" She was not to be denied.
+
+"We're a-goin' to get strike pay," he countered, seizing the opening.
+
+"Strike pay!" she cried scornfully. "A fat lot of good that'll do. A
+pound a week, I suppose, and you eating like a--like a----" she paused
+for a satisfactory simile. "Eating me out of 'ouse and 'ome," she
+amended. "'Strike pay!' I'd give 'em strike pay if I had my way."
+
+"It'll 'elp," suggested Bindle.
+
+"Help! Yes, it'll help you to find out how hungry you can get," she
+retorted grimly. "I'd like to have that man Smillie here, I'd give him a
+bit of my mind."
+
+"But 'e ain't done it," protested Bindle, a sense of fair play prompting
+him to defend the absent leader. "'E's a miner. We don't belong to 'is
+Union."
+
+"They're all tarred with the same brush," cried Mrs. Bindle, "a
+good-for-nothing, lazy lot. They turn you round their little fingers,
+and then laugh at you up their sleeves. I know them," she added darkly.
+
+Bindle edged towards the door. He had not been in favour of the strike;
+now it was even less popular with him.
+
+"I suppose you're going round to your low public-house, to drink and
+smoke and tell each other how clever you've been," she continued. "Then
+you'll come back expecting to find your dinner ready to put in your
+mouth."
+
+Mrs. Bindle's words were prophetic. Bindle _was_ going round to The
+Yellow Ostrich to meet his mates, and discuss the latest strike-news.
+
+"You wouldn't 'ave me a blackleg, Lizzie, would you?" he asked.
+
+"Don't talk to me about such things," she retorted. "I'm a hardworking
+woman, I am, inchin' and pinchin' to keep the home respectable, while
+you and your low companions refuse to work. I wish I had them all here,
+I'd give them strikes." Her voice shook with suppressed passion.
+
+Realising that the fates were against him, Bindle beat a gloomy retreat,
+and turned his steps in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich.
+
+At one o'clock he returned to Fenton Street, a little doubtful; but very
+hungry.
+
+He closed the gate quietly, Mrs. Bindle hated the banging of gates.
+Suddenly he caught sight of a piece of white paper pinned to the front
+door. A moment later he was reading the dumbfounding announcement:
+
+     "I have struck too.
+
+     "E. BINDLE."
+
+The words, which were written on the back of a coal-merchant's
+advertisement, seemed to dance before his eyes.
+
+He was conscious that at the front window on either side a face was
+watching him intently. In Fenton Street drama was the common property of
+all.
+
+With a puzzled expression in his eyes, Bindle stood staring at the piece
+of paper and its ominous message, his right hand scratching his head
+through the blue and white cricket cap he habitually wore.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," he muttered, as Mrs. Grimps, who lived at No. 5,
+came to her door and stood regarding him not unsympathetically.
+
+At the sight of her neighbour, Mrs. Sawney, who occupied No. 9, also
+appeared, her hands rolled up in her apron and her arms steaming. She
+had been engaged in the scullery when "'Arriet," who had been set to
+watch events, rushed in from the front room with the news that Mr.
+Bindle was coming.
+
+"Serves you right, it does," said Mrs. Sawney. "You men," she added, as
+if to remove from her words any suggestion that they were intended as
+personal. Bindle was very popular with his neighbours.
+
+"Strikes you does, when you ain't feeling like work," chorused Mrs.
+Grimps, "I know you."
+
+Bindle looked from one to the other. For once he felt there was nothing
+to say.
+
+"Then there's the kids," said a slatternly-looking woman with a hard
+mouth and dusty hair, who had just drifted up from two doors away. "A
+lot you cares. It's us wot 'as to suffer."
+
+There was a murmur from the other women, who had been reinforced by two
+neighbours from the opposite side of the street.
+
+"She 'as my sympathy," said Mrs. Sawney, "although I can't say I likes
+'er as a friend."
+
+During these remarks, Bindle had been searching for his latch-key, which
+he now drew forth and inserted in the lock; but, although the latch
+responded, the door did not give. It was bolted on the inside.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered again, too surprised at this new phase
+of the situation to be more than dimly conscious of the remarks of those
+about him.
+
+"My sister's man struck three months ago," said one of the new arrivals,
+"and 'er expectin' 'er fifth. Crool I calls it. They ought to 'ave 'em
+theirselves is wot I say. That'ud learn 'em to strike."
+
+A murmur of approval broke from the others at this enigmatical
+utterance.
+
+"It's all very well for them," cried Mrs. Sawney; "but it's us wot 'as
+to suffer, us and the pore kids, bless 'em. 'Arriet, you let me catch
+you swingin' on that gate again, my beauty, and I'll skin you."
+
+The last remark was directed at the little girl, who had seized the
+moment of her mother's pre-occupation to indulge herself in an illicit
+joy.
+
+Without a word, Bindle turned and walked down the flagged path to the
+gate, and along Fenton Street in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich,
+leaving behind him a group of interested women, who would find in his
+tragedy material for a week's gossip.
+
+His customary cheeriness had forsaken him. He realised that he was faced
+by a domestic crisis that frankly puzzled him--and he was hungry.
+
+As he pushed open the hospitable swing-door of The Yellow Ostrich, he
+was greeted by a new and even more bewildering phase of the situation.
+
+"'Ere, Bindle," cried an angry voice, "wot the blinkin' 'ell's your
+missis up to?"
+
+"You may search me," was Bindle's lugubrious reply, as he moved across
+to the bar and ordered a pint of beer, some bread, and "a bit o' the
+cheese wot works the lift."
+
+"You was agin us chaps striking," continued the speaker who had greeted
+Bindle on his entrance, a man with a criminal forehead, a loose mouth,
+and a dirty neck-cloth.
+
+"Wot's your complaint, mate?" enquired Bindle indifferently, as he
+lifted his pewter from the counter, and took a pull that half emptied it
+of its contents.
+
+"Wot's your ruddy missis been up to?" demanded the man aggressively.
+
+"Look 'ere, 'Enery, ole sport," said Bindle quietly, as he wiped his
+lips with the back of his hand, "you ain't pretty, an' you ain't good;
+but try an' keep yer mouth clean when you speaks of Mrs. B. See?"
+
+A murmur of approval rose from the other men, with whom Bindle was
+popular and Henry Gilkes was not.
+
+"Wot's she mean a-goin' round to my missis an' gettin' 'er to bolt me
+out?"
+
+"Bolt you out!" cried Bindle, with a puzzled expression. "Wotjer talkin'
+about?"
+
+"When I goes 'ome to dinner," was the angry retort, "there's a ticket on
+the blinkin' door sayin' my missis 'as struck. I'll strike 'er!" he
+added malevolently. "The lady next door tells me that it's your missis
+wot done it."
+
+For a moment Bindle gazed at his fellow-sufferer, then he smacked his
+thigh with the air of a man who has just seen a great joke, which for
+some time has evaded him.
+
+"'Enery," he grinned, "she's done it to me too."
+
+"Done wot?" enquired Henry, who, as a Father of the Chapel, felt he was
+a man of some importance.
+
+"Locked me out, back _and_ front," explained Bindle, enjoying his mate's
+bewilderment. "Wot about the solidarity of labour now, ole sport?" he
+enquired.
+
+Henry Gilkes had one topic of conversation--"the solidarity of labour."
+Those who worked with him found it wearisome listening to his views on
+the bloated capitalist, and how he was to be overcome. They preferred
+discussing their own betting ventures, and the prospects of the Chelsea
+and Fulham football teams.
+
+"Done it to you!" repeated Gilkes dully. "Wot she done?"
+
+"I jest nipped round to get a bit o' dinner," explained Bindle, "and
+there was both doors bolted, an' a note a-sayin' that Mrs. B. 'ad
+struck. Personally, myself, I calls it a lock-out," he added with a
+grin.
+
+Several of his hearers began to manifest signs of uneasiness. They had
+not been home since early morning.
+
+"I'll break 'er stutterin' jaw if my missis locks me out," growled a
+heavily-bearded man, known as "Ruddy Bill" on account of the intensity
+of his language.
+
+"Jest the sort o' thing you would do," said Bindle genially. "You got a
+sweet nature, Bill, in spite of them whiskers."
+
+Ruddy Bill growled something in his beard, while several of the other
+men drained their pewters and slipped out, intent on discovering whether
+or no their own domestic bliss were threatened by this new and
+unexpected danger.
+
+From then on, the public bar of The Yellow Ostrich hummed with angry
+talk and threats of what would happen if the lords, who there gloried
+and drank deep, should return to their hearths and find manifestations
+of rebellion.
+
+Two of the men, who had gone to investigate the state of their own
+domestic barometers, were back in half an hour with the news that they
+too had been locked out from home and beauty.
+
+About three o'clock, Ruddy Bill returned, streams of profanity flowing
+from his lips. Finding himself bolted out, he had broken open the door;
+but no one was there. Now he was faced with a threat of ejectment from
+the landlord, who had heard of the wilful damage to his property, plus
+the cost of a new door.
+
+Several times that afternoon the landlord of The Yellow Ostrich, himself
+regarded as an epicure in the matter of "language," found it necessary
+to utter the stereotyped phrase, "Now gents, if _you_ please," which,
+with him, meant that the talk was becoming unfit for the fo'c'sle of a
+tramp steamer.
+
+
+II
+
+Left to herself by the departure of Bindle for The Yellow Ostrich, Mrs.
+Bindle had, for some time, stood by the dresser deep in thought. She had
+then wrung-out the house-flannel, emptied the pail, placed them under
+the sink and once more returned to the dresser. Five minutes' meditation
+was followed by swift action.
+
+First she took her bonnet from the dresser-drawer, then unhooking a dark
+brown mackintosh from behind the door, she proceeded to make her outdoor
+toilet in front of the looking-glass on the mantelpiece.
+
+She then sought out ink-bottle and pen, and wrote her defiance with an
+ink-eaten nib. This accomplished, she bolted the front-door on the
+inside, first attaching her strike-notice. Leaving the house by the
+door giving access to the scullery, she locked it, taking the key with
+her.
+
+Her face was grim and her walk was determined, as she made her way to
+the yard at which Bindle was employed. There she demanded to see the
+manager and, after some difficulty, was admitted.
+
+She began by reproaching him and ordering him to stop the strike. When,
+however, he had explained that the strike was entirely due to the action
+of the men, she ended by telling him of her own drastic action, and her
+determination to continue her strike until the men went back.
+
+The manager surprised her by leaning back in his chair and laughing
+uproariously.
+
+"Mrs. Bindle," he cried at length, as he wiped the tears from his eyes,
+"you're a genius; but I'm sorry for Bindle. Now, do you want to end the
+strike in a few hours?"
+
+Mrs. Bindle looked at him suspiciously; but, conscious of the very
+obvious admiration with which he regarded her act, she relented
+sufficiently to listen to what he had to say.
+
+Ten minutes later she left the office with a list of the names and
+addresses of the strikers, including that of the branch organising
+secretary of the Union. She had decided upon a counter-offensive.
+
+Her first call was upon Mrs. Gilkes, a quiet little woman who had been
+subdued to meekness by the "solidarity of labour." Here she had to admit
+failure.
+
+"I know what you mean, my dear," said Mrs. Gilkes; "but you see, Mr.
+Gilkes wouldn't like it." There was a tremor of fear in her voice.
+
+"Wouldn't like it!" echoed Mrs. Bindle. "Of course he wouldn't like it.
+Bindle won't like it when he knows," her jaws met grimly and her lips
+disappeared. "You're afraid," she added accusingly.
+
+"That's it, my dear, I am," was the disconcerting reply. "I never 'ad no
+'eart for a fight, that's why Mr. Gilkes 'as come it over me like 'e
+'as. My sister, Mary, was sayin' only last Toosday--no it wasn't, it was
+We'n'sday, I remember because it was the day we 'ad sausages wot Mr.
+Gilkes said wasn't fresh. 'Amelia,' she says, 'you ain't got the 'eart
+of a rabbit, or else you wouldn't stand wot you do,'" and, looking up
+into Mrs. Bindle's face, she added, "It's true, Mrs. Gimble, although I
+didn't own it to Mary, 'er bein' my sister an' so uppish in 'er ways."
+
+"Well, you'll be sorry," was Mrs. Bindle's comment, as she turned
+towards the door. "I'll be no man's slave."
+
+"You see, I 'aven't the 'eart, Mrs. Gimber."
+
+"Bindle!" snapped Mrs. Bindle over her shoulder.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Spindle, my mistake."
+
+Mrs. Bindle stalked along the passage, through the front door and out of
+the gate, leaving Mrs. Gilkes murmuring deprecatingly that she "'adn't
+no 'eart for a fight."
+
+Although she would not own it, Mrs. Bindle was discouraged by the
+failure of her first attempt at strike-breaking. But for her
+good-fortune in encountering Mrs. Hopton at her second venture, she
+might even have relinquished the part of Lysistrata and have returned
+home to prepare Bindle's dinner.
+
+It was with something like misgiving that she knocked at No. 32 Wessels
+Street. This feeling was accentuated when the door was opened with great
+suddenness by an enormously big woman with a square chin, fighting eyes,
+and very little hair.
+
+With arms akimbo, one elbow touching either side of the passage, as if
+imbued with the sentiments of Horatius Cocles, Mrs. Hopton stood with
+tightly-shut mouth regarding her caller. As soon as Mrs. Bindle had made
+her mission known, however, Mrs. Hopton's manner underwent an entire
+change. Her hands dropped from her hips, her fixed expression relaxed,
+and she stood invitingly aside.
+
+"I'm your woman," she cried. "You come in, Mrs.----"
+
+"Bindle!" prompted Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"You come in, Mrs. Bindle, you got the woman you want in Martha 'Opton.
+Us women 'ave stood this sort of thing long enough. I've always said
+so."
+
+She led the way into an airless little parlour, in which a case of
+wax-fruit, a dusty stuffed dog and a clothes-horse hung with the
+familiarities of Mrs. Hopton's laundry, first struck the eye.
+
+"I've always said," continued Mrs. Hopton, "that us women was too meek
+and mild by half in the way we takes things. My man's a fool," she added
+with conviction. "'E's that easily led by them arbitrators, that's wot I
+call 'em, that they makes 'im do just wotever they wants, dirty, lazy
+set o' tykes. Never done a day's work in their lives, they 'aven't, not
+one of 'em."
+
+"That's what I say," cried Mrs. Bindle, for once in her life finding a
+congenial spirit outside the walls of the Alton Road Chapel. "I've
+locked up my house," she continued, "and put a note on the door that
+I've struck too."
+
+The effect of these words upon Mrs. Hopton was startling. Her head went
+back like that of a chicken drinking, her hands rose once more to her
+hips, and her huge frame shook and pulsated as if it contained a
+high-power motor-engine. Mrs. Bindle gazed at her with widened eyes.
+
+"Her-her-her!" came in deep, liquid gutturals from Mrs. Hopton's lips.
+"Her-her-her!" Then her head came down again, and Mrs. Bindle saw that
+the grim lips were parted, displaying some very yellow, unprepossessing
+teeth. Mrs. Hopton was manifesting amusement.
+
+Without further comment, Mrs. Hopton left the room. In her absence, Mrs.
+Bindle proceeded to sum-up her character from the evidence that her home
+contained. The result was unfavourable. She had just decided that her
+hostess was dirty and untidy, without sense of decency or religion, when
+Mrs. Hopton re-entered. In one hand she carried a piece of paper, in the
+other a small ink-bottle, out of which an orange-coloured pen-holder
+reared its fluted length.
+
+Clearing a space on the untidy table, she bent down and, with squared
+elbows and cramped fingers, proceeded to scrawl the words: "I have
+struck too. M. Hopton."
+
+Then, straightening herself, she once more threw back her head, and
+another stream of "Her-her-her's" gushed towards the ceiling.
+
+"Now I'll come with you," she said at length. Without waiting to don
+cloak or bonnet, she proceeded to pin the notice on the front door,
+which she bolted on the inside. She then left by the scullery door,
+locking it, just as Mrs. Bindle had done, and carrying with her the key.
+
+Although Mrs. Bindle felt that she suffered socially from being seen
+with the lumbering, untidy Mrs. Hopton, she regarded it as a sacrifice
+to a just cause. It was not long, however, before she discovered that
+she had recruited, not a lieutenant, but a leader.
+
+Seizing the list of names and addresses from her companion's hand, Mrs.
+Hopton glanced at it and turned in the direction of the street in which
+lived the timid Mrs. Gilkes. As they walked, Mrs. Bindle told the story
+of Mrs. Gilkes's cowardice, drawing from the Amazon-like Mrs. Hopton the
+significant words "Leave 'er to me."
+
+"Now then, none of this," was her greeting to Mrs. Gilkes as she opened
+her front door. "Out you comes and joins the strike-breakers. None o'
+your nonsense or----" she paused significantly.
+
+Mrs. Gilkes protested her cowardice, she grovelled, she dragged in her
+sister, Mary, and the wrathful Gilkes; but without avail. Almost before
+she knew what had happened, she was walking between Mrs. Hopton and
+Mrs. Bindle, the back-door key clasped in one hand, striving to tie the
+strings of her bonnet beneath a chin that was obviously too shallow for
+the purpose. In her heart was a great terror; yet she was conscious of a
+strange and not unpleasant thrill at the thought of her own daring. She
+comforted herself with Mrs. Hopton's promise of protection against her
+lord's anger.
+
+The overpowering personality of Mrs. Hopton was too much for the other
+wives. The one or two who made a valiant endeavour to stand out were
+overwhelmed by her ponderous ridicule, which bordered upon intimidation.
+
+"'Ere, get a pen an' ink," she would cry and, before the reluctant
+housewife knew what had happened, she had announced that she too had
+struck, and Mrs. Hopton's army had been swelled by another recruit.
+
+At one house they found the husband about to sit down to an early
+dinner. That gave Mrs. Hopton her chance.
+
+"You lazy, guzzling, good-for-nothing son of a God-damn loafer!" she
+shouted, her deep voice throbbing with passion. "Call yourself a man?
+Fine sort of man you are, letting your wife work and slave while you
+strike and fill your belly with beef and beer. I've seen better things
+than you thrown down the sink, that I 'ave."
+
+At the first attack, the man had risen from the table in bewilderment.
+As Mrs. Hopton emptied upon him the vials of her anger, he had slowly
+retreated towards the scullery door. She made a sudden movement in his
+direction; he turned--wrenched open the door, and fled.
+
+"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mrs.----"
+
+"Bolton," said the neat little woman.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bolton," said Mrs. Hopton; "but we're going to break
+this 'ere strike, me and Mrs. Bindle and all these other ladies." She
+waved her hand to indicate the army she had already collected.
+
+Then she went on to explain; but Mrs. Bolton was adamant against all her
+invitations to join the emancipationists.
+
+"I suppose we got to fight your battle," Mrs. Hopton cried, and
+proceeded to drench her victim with ridicule; but Mrs. Bolton stood
+fast, and the strike-breakers had to acknowledge defeat.
+
+It was Mrs. Bindle's idea that they should hold a meeting outside the
+organising secretary's house. The suggestion was acclaimed with
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Let's get a tidy few, first," counselled Mrs. Hopton. "It'll make 'im
+think 'arder."
+
+At the end of an hour, even Mrs. Hopton was satisfied with the number of
+her supporters, and she gave the word for the opening of hostilities.
+
+That afternoon, just as he was rising from an excellent meal, Mr. James
+Cunham was surprised to find that his neatly-kept front-garden was
+filled with women, while more women seemed to occupy the street.
+Neighbours came out, errand-boys called to friends, that they might not
+miss the episode, children paused on their way to school; all seemed to
+realise the dramatic possibilities of the situation.
+
+Mrs. Hopton played a fugue upon Mr. Cunham's knocker, bringing him to
+the door in person.
+
+"Well, monkey-face," she boomed. There was a scream of laughter from her
+followers.
+
+Mr. Cunham started back as if he had been struck.
+
+"Want to starve us, do you?" continued Mrs. Hopton.
+
+"What's all this about?" he enquired, recovering himself. He was a man
+accustomed to handling crowds, even unfriendly crowds; but never had he
+encountered anything like the cataract of wrathful contumely that now
+poured from Mrs. Hopton's lips.
+
+"Just 'ad a good dinner, I suppose," she cried scornfully. "Been
+enjoyin' it, eh? Cut from the joint and two vegs, puddin' to follow,
+with a glass of stout to wash it down. That the meenyou, eh? What does
+it cost you when our men strike? Do you 'ave to keep 'alf a dozen
+bellies full on a pound a week?"
+
+There was a murmur from the women behind her, a murmur that Mr. Cunham
+did not like.
+
+"Nice little 'ouse you got 'ere," continued Mrs. Hopton critically, as
+she peered into the neat and well-furnished hall. "All got out o'
+strikes," she added over her shoulder to her companions. "All got on the
+do-nothin'-at-all-easy-purchase-system."
+
+This time there was no mistaking the menace in the murmur from the women
+behind her.
+
+"You're a beauty, you are," continued Mrs. Hopton. "Not much sweat about
+your lily brow, Mr. Funny Cunham."
+
+Mr. Cunham felt that the time had come for action.
+
+"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Why have you come here, and
+who are you?"
+
+"Who are we?" cried Mrs. Hopton scornfully. "He asks who we are," she
+threw over her shoulder.
+
+Again there was an angry murmur from the rank and file.
+
+"We're the silly fools wot married the men you brought out on strike,"
+said Mrs. Hopton, looking the organising secretary up and down as if he
+were on show. "Creases in 'is trousers, too," she cried. "You ain't 'alf
+a swell. Well, we just come to tell you that the strike's orf, because
+we've struck. Get me, Steve?"
+
+"We've declared a lock-out," broke in Mrs. Bindle with inspiration.
+
+Back went Mrs. Hopton's head, up went her hands to her hips, and
+deep-throated "Her-her-her's" poured from her parted lips.
+
+"A lock-out!" she cried. "Her-her-her, a lock-out! That's the stuff to
+give 'em!" and the rank and file took up the cry and, out of the
+plenitude of his experience, Mr. Cunham recognised that the crowd was
+hopelessly out of hand.
+
+"Are we down-hearted?" cried a voice, and the shrieks of "No!" that
+followed confirmed Mr. Cunham in his opinion that the situation was not
+without its serious aspect.
+
+He was not a coward and he stood his ground, listening to Mrs. Hopton's
+inspiring oratory of denunciation. It was three o'clock before he saw
+his garden again--a trampled waste; an offering to the Moloch of
+strikes.
+
+"Damn the woman!" he cried, as, shutting the door, he returned to the
+room he used as an office, there to deliberate upon this new phase of
+the situation. "Curse her!"
+
+
+III
+
+It was nearly half-past ten that night when Bindle tip-toed up the
+tiled-path leading to the front door of No. 7 Fenton Street.
+
+Softly he inserted his key in the lock and turned it; but the door
+refused to give. He stepped back to gaze up at the bedroom window; there
+was no sign of a light.
+
+It suddenly struck him that the piece of paper on the door was not the
+same in shape as that he had seen at dinner-time. It was too dark to see
+if there was anything written on it. Taking a box of matches from his
+pocket, he struck a light, shielding it carefully so that it should
+shine only on the paper.
+
+His astonishment at what he read caused him to forget the lighted match,
+which burnt his fingers.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "If this ain't it," and once more he
+read the sinister notice:
+
+     "You have struck. We women have declared a lock-out.
+
+     "E. BINDLE."
+
+After a few minutes' cogitation, he tip-toed down the path and round to
+the back of the house; but the scullery door was inflexible in its
+inhospitality.
+
+He next examined the windows. Each was securely fastened.
+
+"Where'm I goin' to sleep?" he muttered, as once more he tip-toed up the
+path.
+
+After a further long deliberation, he lifted the knocker, gave three
+gentle taps--and waited. As nothing happened, he tried four taps of
+greater strength. These, in turn, produced no response. Then he gave a
+knock suggestive of a telegraph boy, or a registered letter. At each
+fresh effort he stepped back to get a view of the bedroom window.
+
+He fancied that the postman-cum-telegraph-boy's knock had produced a
+slight fluttering of the curtain. He followed it up with something that
+might have been the police, or a fire.
+
+As he stepped back, the bedroom-window was thrown up, and Mrs. Bindle's
+head appeared.
+
+"What's the matter?" she cried.
+
+"I can't get in," said Bindle.
+
+"I know you can't," was the uncompromising response, "and I don't mean
+you shall."
+
+"But where'm I goin' to sleep?" he demanded, anxiety in his voice.
+
+"That's for you to settle."
+
+"'Ere, Lizzie, come down an' let me in," he cried, falling to cajolery.
+
+For answer Mrs. Bindle banged-to the window. He waited expectantly for
+the door to be opened.
+
+At the end of five minutes he realised that Mrs. Bindle had probably
+gone back to bed.
+
+"Well, I can't stay 'ere all the bloomin' night, me with various veins
+in my legs," he muttered, conscious that from several windows interested
+heads were thrust.
+
+Fully convinced that Mrs. Bindle was not on her way down to admit him,
+he once more fell back upon the knocker, awakening the echoes of Fenton
+Street.
+
+At the sound of the window-sash being raised, he stepped back and looked
+up eagerly.
+
+"'Ere, wot the ----!"
+
+Something seemed to flash through the night, and he received the
+contents of the ewer full in the face.
+
+"That'll teach you to come waking me up at this time of night," came the
+voice of Mrs. Bindle, who, a moment later, retreated into the room.
+Bindle, rightly conjecturing that she had gone for more water, retired
+out of reach.
+
+"You soaked me through to the skin," he cried, when she re-appeared.
+
+"And serve you right, too, you and your strikes."
+
+"But ain't you goin' to let me in?"
+
+"When the strike's off the lock-out'll cease," was the oracular retort.
+
+"But I didn't want to strike," protested Bindle.
+
+"Then you should have been a man and said so, instead of letting that
+little rat make you do everything he wants, him sitting down to a good
+dinner every day, all paid for out of strikes."
+
+There were sympathetic murmurs from the surrounding darkness.
+
+"But----" began Bindle.
+
+"Don't let me 'ear anything more of you to-night, Joe Bindle," came Mrs.
+Bindle's uncompromising voice, "or next time I'll throw the jug an' all
+at you," and with that she banged-to the window in a way that convinced
+Bindle it was useless to parley further.
+
+"Catch my death o' cold," he grumbled, as he turned on a reluctant heel
+in the direction of Fulham High Street, with the intention of claiming
+hospitality from his sister-in-law, Mrs. Hearty. "Wot am I goin' to do
+for duds," he added. "Funny ole bird I should look in one of 'Earty's
+frock-coats."
+
+
+IV
+
+The next morning at nine o'clock, the wives of the strikers met by
+arrangement outside the organising secretary's house; but the strikers
+themselves were before them, and Mr. Cunham found himself faced with the
+ugliest situation he had ever encountered.
+
+At the sight of the groups of strikers, the women raised shrill cries.
+The men, too, lifted their voices, not in derision or criticism of their
+helpmates; but at the organising secretary.
+
+The previous night the same drama that had been enacted between Bindle
+and Mrs. Bindle had taken place outside the houses of many of the other
+strikers, with the result that they had become "fed up to the blinkin'
+neck with the whole ruddy business."
+
+"Well!" cried Mrs. Hopton as, at the head of her legion of Amazons, she
+reached the first group of men. "How jer like it?"
+
+The men turned aside, grumbling in their throats.
+
+"Her-her-her!" she laughed. "Boot's on the other foot now, my pretty
+canaries, ain't it? Nobody mustn't do anythink to upset you; but you can
+do what you streamin' well like, you lot o' silly mugs!
+
+"Wotjer let that little rat-faced sniveller turn you round 'is little
+finger for? You ain't men, you're just Unionists wot 'ave got to do wot
+'e tells you. I see 'im yesterday," she continued after a slight pause,
+"'aving a rare ole guzzle wot you pays for by striking. 'Ow much does it
+cost 'im? That's wot I want to know, the rat-faced little stinker!"
+
+At that moment "the rat-faced little stinker" himself appeared, hat on
+head and light overcoat thrown over his arm. He smiled wearily, he was
+not favourably impressed by the look of things.
+
+His appearance was the signal for shrill shouts from the women, and a
+grumbling murmur from the men.
+
+"'Ere's Kayser Cunham," shouted one woman, and then individual cries
+were drowned in the angry murmur of protest and recrimination.
+
+Mr. Cunham found himself faced by the same men who, the day before, had
+greeted his words with cheers. Now they made it manifest that if he did
+not find a way out of the strike difficulty, there would be trouble.
+
+"Take that!" roared Mrs. Hopton hoarsely, as she snatched something from
+a paper-bag she was carrying, and hurled it with all her might at the
+leader. Her aim was bad, and a small man, standing at right angles to
+the Union secretary, received a large and painfully ripe tomato full on
+the chin.
+
+Mrs. Hopton's cry was a signal to the other women. From beneath cloaks
+and capes they produced every conceivable missile, including a number of
+eggs far gone towards chickenhood. With more zeal than accuracy of aim,
+they hurled them at the unfortunate Mr. Cunham. For a full minute he
+stood his ground valiantly, then, an egg catching him between the eyes
+brought swift oblivion.
+
+The strikers, however, did not manifest the courage of their leader.
+Although intended for the organising secretary, most of the missiles
+found a way into their ranks. They wavered and, a moment after, turned
+and fled.
+
+Approaching nearer, the women concentrated upon him whom they regarded
+as responsible for the strike, and their aim improved. Some of their
+shots took effect on his person, but most of them on the front of the
+house. Three windows were broken, and it was not until Mrs. Cunham came
+and dragged her egg-bespattered lord into the passage, banging-to the
+street door behind her, that the storm began to die down.
+
+By this time a considerable crowd of interested spectators had gathered.
+
+"Just shows you what us women can do if we've a mind to do it," was the
+oracular utterance of one woman, who prided herself upon having been the
+first arrival outside the actual combatants.
+
+"She ain't 'alf a caution," remarked a "lady friend," who had joined her
+soon after the outbreak of hostilities. "That big un," she added,
+nodding in the direction of Mrs. Hopton, who, arms on hips and head
+thrown back, was giving vent to her mirth in a series of
+"her-her-her's."
+
+A policeman pushed his way through the crowd towards the gate. Mrs.
+Hopton, catching sight of him, turned.
+
+"You take my advice, my lad, and keep out of this."
+
+The policeman looked about him a little uncertainly.
+
+"What's the matter?" he enquired.
+
+"It's a strike and a lock-out," she explained, "an' they got a bit
+mixed. We ain't got no quarrel with a good-looking young chap like you,
+an' we're on private premises, so you just jazz along as if you 'adn't
+seen us."
+
+A smile fluttered about the lips of the policeman. The thought of
+passing Mrs. Hopton without seeing her amused him; still he took no
+active part in the proceedings, beyond an official exhortation to the
+crowd to "pass along, please."
+
+"Well, ladies," said Mrs. Hopton, addressing her victorious legions;
+"it's all over now, bar shoutin'. If any o' your men start a-knockin'
+you about, tell 'em we're a-goin' to stand together, and just let me
+know. We'll come round and make 'em wish they'd been born somethink wot
+can't feel."
+
+That morning the manager at the yard received a deputation from the men,
+headed by Mr. Cunham, who, although he had changed his clothes and taken
+a hot bath, was still conscious of the disgusting reek of rotten eggs.
+Before dinner-time the whole matter had been settled, and the men were
+to resume work at two o'clock.
+
+Bindle reached home a few minutes to one, hungry and expectant. The
+notice had been removed from the front door, and he found Mrs. Bindle in
+the kitchen ironing.
+
+"Well," she demanded as he entered, "what do you want?"
+
+"Strike's orf, Lizzie," he said genially, an anxious eye turned to the
+stove upon which, however, there were no saucepans. This decided him
+that his dinner was in the oven.
+
+"I could have told you that!" was her sole comment, and she proceeded
+with her ironing.
+
+For a few minutes Bindle looked about him, then once more fixed his gaze
+upon the oven.
+
+"Wot time you goin' to 'ave dinner, Lizzie?" he asked, with all the
+geniality of a prodigal doubtful of his welcome.
+
+"I've had it." Mrs. Bindle's lips met in a hard, firm line.
+
+"Is mine in the oven?"
+
+"Better look and see."
+
+He walked across to the stove and opened the oven door. It was as bare
+as the cupboard of Mrs. Hubbard.
+
+"Wot you done with it, Lizzie?" he enquired, misgiving clutching at his
+heart.
+
+"What have I done with what?" she snapped, as she brought her iron down
+with a bang that caused him to jump.
+
+"My little bit o' groundsel."
+
+"When you talk sense, perhaps I can understand you."
+
+"My dinner," he explained with an injured air.
+
+"When you've done a day's work you'll get a day's dinner, and not
+before."
+
+"But the strike's orf."
+
+"So's the lock-out."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Don't stand there 'butting' me. Go and do some work, then you'll have
+something to eat," and Mrs. Bindle reversed the pillow-case she was
+ironing, and got in a straight right full in the centre of it, whilst
+Bindle turned gloomily to the door and made his way to The Yellow
+Ostrich, where, over a pint of beer and some bread and cheese, he
+gloomed his discontent.
+
+"No more strikes for me," said a man seated opposite, who was similarly
+engaged.
+
+"Same 'ere," said Bindle.
+
+"Bob Cunham got a flea in 'is ear this mornin' wot 'e's been askin'
+for," said the man, and Bindle, nodding in agreement, buried his face in
+his pewter.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Hopton was explaining to a few personal friends how it
+all had happened.
+
+"She done good work in startin' of us orf," was her tribute to Mrs.
+Bindle; "but I can't say I takes to her as a friend."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY
+
+
+I
+
+Shoooooooossssh!
+
+Like a silver flash, the contents of a water-jug descended upon the back
+of the moth-eaten sandy cat, engaged in excavating Mrs. Bindle's
+geranium-bed.
+
+A curve of yellow, and Mrs. Sawney's "Sandy" had taken the dividing wall
+between No. 7 and No. 9 in one movement--and the drama was over.
+
+Mrs. Bindle closed her parlour-window. She refilled the jug, placing it
+ready for the next delinquent and then returned to her domestic duties.
+
+On the other side of a thin partitioning wall, Mrs. Sawney left the
+window from which she had viewed her cat's attack upon Mrs. Bindle's
+geranium-bed, and Mrs. Bindle's counter-attack upon Sandy's person.
+Passing into the small passage she opened the front door, her lips set
+in a determined line.
+
+"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," she called, in accents that caused Sandy,
+now three gardens away, to pause in the act of shaking his various
+members one by one, in an endeavour to disembarrass himself of the
+contents of Mrs. Bindle's water-jug.
+
+"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," cooed Mrs. Sawney. "Poor pussy."
+
+The tone of his mistress' voice rendered Sandy suspicious as to her
+intentions. He was a cat who had fought his way from kittenhood to a
+three-year-old, and that with the loss of nothing more conspicuous than
+the tip of his left ear. He could not remember the time when he had not
+been engaged in warfare, either predatory or defensive, and he had
+accumulated much wisdom in the process.
+
+"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. Puss, puss, puss." Mrs. Sawney's tone grew
+in mellowness as her anger increased. "Poor pussy."
+
+With a final shake of his near hind leg, Sandy put two more gardens
+between himself and that voice, and proceeded to damn to-morrow's
+weather by washing clean over his right ear.
+
+Mrs. Sawney closed her front-door and retired to the regions that knew
+her best. In her heart was a great anger. Water had been thrown over her
+cat, an act which, according to Mrs. Sawney's code of ethics,
+constituted a personal affront.
+
+It was Monday, and with Mrs. Sawney the effect of the Monday-morning
+feeling, coupled with the purifying of the domestic linen, was a sore
+trial to her never very philosophical nature.
+
+"To-morrow'll be _'er_ washing-day," she muttered, as she poked down the
+clothes in the bubbling copper with a long stick, bleached and furred by
+constant immersion in boiling water. "I'll show 'er, throwing water
+over my cat, the stuck-up baggage!"
+
+Late that afternoon, she called upon Mrs. Grimps, who lived at No. 5, to
+return the scrubbing-board she had borrowed that morning. With Mrs.
+Sawney, to borrow was to manifest the qualities of neighbourliness, and
+one of her grievances against Mrs. Bindle was that she was "too stuck up
+to borrow a pin."
+
+Had Sandy heard the sentiments that fell from his mistress's lips that
+afternoon, and had he not been the Ulysses among cats that he
+undoubtedly was, he would have become convinced that a new heaven or a
+new earth was in prospect. As it was, Sandy was two streets away,
+engaged in an affair with a lady of piebald appearance and coy
+demeanour.
+
+When, half an hour later, Mrs. Sawney returned to No. 9, her expression
+was even more grim. The sight of the pink tie-ups with which the white
+lace curtains at No. 7 were looped back, rendered her forgetful of her
+recently expressed sentiments. She sent Sandy at express speed from her
+sight, and soundly boxed Harriet's ears. Mrs. Sawney was annoyed.
+
+
+II
+
+All her life Mrs. Bindle had been exclusive. She prided herself upon the
+fact that she was never to be seen gossiping upon doorstep, or at
+garden-gate. In consequence, she was regarded as "a stuck-up cat"; she
+called it keeping herself to herself.
+
+Another cause of her unpopularity with the housewives of Fenton Street
+was the way she stared at their windows as she passed. There was in that
+look criticism and disdain, and it inspired her neighbours with fury,
+the more so because of their impotence.
+
+Mrs. Bindle judged a woman by her windows--and by the same token
+condemned her. Fenton Street knew it, and treasured up the memory.
+
+It was this attitude towards their windows, more than Mrs. Bindle's
+exclusiveness in the matter of front-door, or back-door gossip, that
+made for her unpopularity with those among whom circumstances and the
+jerry-builder had ordained that she should spend her days. She regarded
+it as a virtue not to be on speaking terms with anyone in the street.
+
+For the most part, Mrs. Bindle and her immediate neighbours lived in a
+state of armed neutrality. On the one side was Mrs. Sawney, a lath of a
+woman with an insatiable appetite for scandal and the mouth of a scold,
+whose windows were, in Mrs. Bindle's opinion, a disgrace; on the other
+was Mrs. Grimps, a big, jolly-looking woman, who laughed loudly at
+things, about which Mrs. Bindle did not even permit herself to think.
+
+In spite of the armistice that prevailed, there were occasions when
+slumbering dislike would develop into open hostilities. The strategy
+employed was almost invariably the same, just as were the forces
+engaged.
+
+These encounters generally took place on Tuesdays, Mrs. Bindle's
+washing-day. To a woman, Fenton Street washed on Monday, and the fact of
+Mrs. Bindle selecting Tuesday for the cleansing her household linen was,
+in the eyes of other housewives, a direct challenge. It was an endeavour
+to vaunt her own superiority, and Fenton Street, despite its cockney
+good-nature, found it impossible to forgive what it regarded as "swank".
+
+The result was that occasionally Fenton Street gave tongue, sometimes
+through the medium of its offspring; at others from the lips of the
+women themselves.
+
+Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had conceived a clever strategy, which never
+failed in its effect upon their victim. On Mrs. Bindle's washing-days,
+when hostilities had been decided on, Mrs. Grimps would go up to the
+back-bedroom window, whilst Mrs. Sawney would stand at her back-door, or
+conversely. From these positions, the fences being low, they had an
+excellent view of the back garden of No. 7, and would carry on a
+conversation, the subject of which would be Mrs. Bindle, or the garments
+she was exposing to the public gaze.
+
+The two women seemed to find a never-ending source of interest in their
+neighbour's laundry. Being intensely refined in all such matters, Mrs.
+Bindle subjected her weekly wash to a strict censorship, drying the more
+intimate garments before the kitchen fire. This evoked frankly-expressed
+speculation between her two enemies as to how anyone could live without
+change of clothing.
+
+In her heart, Mrs. Bindle had come to dislike, almost to dread,
+washing-days, although she in no way mitigated her uncompromising
+attitude towards her neighbours.
+
+When, on the Wednesday morning following one of these one-sided battles,
+Mrs. Bindle went out shopping, her glances at the front-windows of Mrs.
+Grimps's house, or those of Mrs. Sawney, according to the direction she
+took, were steadier and more critical than ever. Mrs. Bindle was not one
+to strike her flag to the enemy.
+
+Soon after nine on the Tuesday morning after Sandy had constituted
+himself a casus belli, Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery carrying a
+basketful of clothes, on the top of which lay a handful of clothes-pegs.
+Placing the basket on the ground, she proceeded to wipe with a cloth the
+clothes-line, which Bindle had put up before breakfast.
+
+The sight of her neat, angular form in the garden was the signal for
+Mrs. Grimps to come to her back door, whilst Mrs. Sawney ascended her
+stairs. A moment later, the back window of No. 9 was thrown up with a
+flourish, and the hard face of Sandy's mistress appeared.
+
+It was a curious circumstance that, although there was never any
+pre-arrangement, Mrs. Sawney always seemed to appear at the window just
+as Mrs. Grimps emerged from her back door, or the order would be
+reversed. Never had they been known both to appear together, either at
+window or at door. Their mutual understanding seemed to be that of the
+ancient pair in the old-fashioned weather-indicator.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Grimps," called Mrs. Sawney from her post of
+vantage.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Sawney," responded Mrs. Grimps. "Beautiful day,
+ain't it?"
+
+"Fine dryin' weather," responded Mrs. Sawney.
+
+"I see you got your washin' finished early yes'day."
+
+"Yes, an' a rare lot there was this week," said Mrs. Sawney, settling
+her arms comfortably upon the window-sill. "You 'ad a tidy bit, too, I
+see."
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Grimps, picking a back-tooth with a hair-pin. "Mr.
+Grimps is like Mr. Sawney, must 'ave 'is clean pair o' pants every week,
+'e must, an' a shirt an' vest, too. I tell 'im he ought to 'ave been a
+millionaire."
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Sawney, "I sometimes wishes my 'usband would be content
+with calico linings to 'is trousers, like some folks I could name. 'E's
+afraid o' them rubbin' 'im, 'e says; but then 'e always was clean in 'is
+'abits."
+
+This remark was directly levelled at Mrs. Bindle's censorship of
+everything appertaining to nether-laundry.
+
+"Well, I must say I sympathises with 'im," remarked Mrs. Grimps,
+returning the hair-pin to where it belonged. "When I sees some folks'
+washing, I says to myself, I says, 'Wot can they wear underneath?'"
+
+"An' well you might, Mrs. Grimps," cried Mrs. Sawney meaningly. "P'raps
+they spend the money on pink ribbons to tie up their lace curtains. It's
+all very well to make a show with yer windows, but," with the air of one
+who has made an important discovery, "you can't be clean unless you're
+clean all over, I says."
+
+Whilst these remarks were being bandied to and fro over her head, Mrs.
+Bindle had been engaged in pegging to the clothes-line the first batch
+of her week's wash. Her face was grimmer and harder than usual, and
+there was in her eyes a cold, grey look, suggestive of an iron control.
+
+"Yes," proceeded Mrs. Grimps, "I always 'ave said an' always shall, that
+it's the underneaths wot count."
+
+Mrs. Bindle stuck a peg in the corner of a tablecloth and, taking
+another from her mouth, she proceeded to the other end of the tablecloth
+and jabbed that, too, astride the line.
+
+"'Always 'ave dainty linjerry, 'Arriet,' my pore mother used to say,"
+continued Mrs. Sawney, "an' I always 'ave. After all, who wants three
+pillow-cases a week?"
+
+This was in the nature of a direct challenge, as Mrs. Bindle had just
+stepped back from attaching to the line a third pillow-case, which
+immediately proceeded to balloon itself into joyous abandon.
+
+"If you _are_ religious, you didn't ought to be cruel to dumb animals,"
+announced Mrs. Grimps, "throwin' water over the pore creatures."
+
+"That sort never is kind to any think but theirselves," commented Mrs.
+Sawney, with the air of one who is well-versed in the ways of the
+devout.
+
+Each time Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery that morning, her two
+relentless neighbours appeared as if by magic, and oblique pleasantries
+ebbed and flowed above her head.
+
+The episode of Mrs. Bindle's lock-out was discussed in detail. The
+"goody-goody" qualities affected by "some people" were commented on in
+relation to the more brutal instincts they occasionally manifested.
+
+The treatment that certain pleasant-spoken husbands, whom it was "a
+pleasure to meet," received from their wives, whose faces were like
+"vinegar on the point of a needle," left both Mrs. Grimps and Mrs.
+Sawney incapable of expressing the indignation that was within them.
+
+When Bindle came home to dinner, he found "Mrs. B. with a temper wot 'ad
+got a nasty edge on it," as he expressed it to one of his mates on his
+return to work. He was too wise, however, to venture an enquiry as to
+the cause. He realised that to ask for the wind might mean reaping the
+whirlwind.
+
+Immediately after the meal, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to clear the lines to
+make room for another batch. She hoped to get done whilst her neighbours
+were at dinner; but she had not been in the garden half-a-minute before
+her tormentors appeared.
+
+"I been thinkin' of keepin' a few fowls," remarked Mrs. Sawney, her
+mouth full of bread and cheese, "jest a 'andful of cocks an' a few
+'ens," and she winked down at Mrs. Grimps, as Mrs. Bindle pegged a lace
+window-curtain on the line, having first subjected it to a vigorous
+rubbing with a duster.
+
+"An' very nice too," agreed Mrs. Grimps; "I must say I likes an egg for
+my tea," she added, "only them cocks do fight so."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't get too many," continued Mrs. Sawney, "say three
+cocks an' three 'ens. They ought to get on nicely together."
+
+These remarks had reference to a one-time project of Mrs. Bindle to
+supply her table with new-laid eggs, in the pursuit of which she had
+purchased three pairs of birds, equally divided as to sex.
+
+"That was the only time I ever enjoyed a bit o' cock-fightin' on my
+own," Bindle was wont to remark, when telling the story of Mrs. Bindle's
+application of the rule of monogamy to a fowl-run.
+
+He had made one endeavour to enlighten Mrs. Bindle upon the fact that
+the domestic cock (she insisted on the term "rooster") had neither
+rounded Cape Turk, nor weathered Seraglio Point; but he was told not to
+be disgusting, Mrs. Bindle's invariable rejoinder when sex matters
+cropped up. He had therefore desisted, enjoying to the full Mrs.
+Bindle's efforts to police her new colony.
+
+In those days, the Bindle's back garden had been a riot of flying
+feathers, belligerent cocks and squawking hens, chivvied about by Mrs.
+Bindle, armed with mop or broom.
+
+Mrs. Sawney and a Mrs. Telcher, who had preceded Mrs. Grimps in the
+occupancy of No. 5, had sat at their bedroom windows, laughing until the
+tears ran down their dubious cheeks and their sides ached. When their
+mirth permitted, they had tendered advice; but for the most part they
+were so weak from laughing that speech was denied them.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's knowledge of the ways of fowls was limited; but it
+embraced one important piece of information--that without "roosters",
+hens would not lay. When Bindle had striven to set her right, he had
+been silenced with the inevitable, "Don't be disgusting."
+
+She had reasoned that if hens were stimulated to lay by the presence of
+the "male bird", then a cavalier each would surely result in an
+increased output.
+
+The fowls, however, had disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and
+thereafter Bindle realised that it was neither safe nor politic to refer
+to the subject. It had taken a plate of rice, hurled at his head from
+the other side of the kitchen, to bring him to this philosophical frame
+of mind.
+
+For weeks afterwards, the children of Fenton Street would greet Mrs.
+Bindle's appearance with strange crowing noises, which pleased them and
+convulsed their parents; for Mrs. Bindle's fowls had become _the_ joke
+of the neighbourhood.
+
+"I must say I likes a man wots got a pleasant word for everyone,"
+remarked Mrs. Sawney, some two hours later, as Mrs. Bindle picked up the
+clothes-basket containing the last of the day's wash, and made for the
+scullery door, "even when 'e ain't 'appy in 'is 'ome life," she added,
+as the scullery door banged-to for the day, and Mrs. Grimps concurred as
+she disappeared, to catch-up with the day's work as best she could, and
+prepare the children's tea.
+
+
+III
+
+That evening at supper, Bindle heard what had been withheld from Mrs.
+Grimps and Mrs. Sawney--Mrs. Bindle's opinion of her neighbours. With
+great dexterity, she managed to link him up with their misdeeds. He
+should have got on as his brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, had got on, and
+then she would not have been forced to reside in a neighbourhood so
+utterly dead to all sense of refinement and proper conduct.
+
+Bindle had come to regard Tuesdays as days of wrath, and he usually
+managed to slip out after supper with as little ostentation as possible.
+Reasoning that religion and cleanliness were productive of such mental
+disturbances, he was frankly for what he called "a dirty 'eathen"; but
+he was wise enough to keep his views to himself.
+
+"If you were a man you'd stop it," she stormed, "allowing me to be
+insulted as I've been to-day."
+
+"But 'ow can I stop you an' them a-scrappin'?" he protested, with
+corrugated forehead.
+
+"You can go in and tell them that you won't have it."
+
+"But then Sawney an' Grimps would start on me."
+
+"That's what it is, you're afraid," she cried, triumphantly. "If you was
+a man you'd hit back; but you're not."
+
+"But I ain't a-goin' to start fightin' because some one says I don't
+wear----"
+
+"Stop it!"
+
+And Bindle stopped it.
+
+"Why don't you do something like Mr. Hearty?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, as
+he pushed back his chair and rose. She was determined not to be deprived
+of her scapegoat, at least not without another offensive.
+
+He paused before replying, making sure that his line of retreat was
+open. The greengrocering success of her brother-in-law was used by Mrs.
+Bindle as a whip of scorpions.
+
+"'Earty don't do things," he replied, sidling towards the door. "'E does
+people," and with footwork that would have made a champion fly-weight
+envious, he was out in the passage before Mrs. Bindle could retort.
+
+Long and late that night she pondered over the indignities to which she
+had been subjected during the day. There were wanton moments when she
+yearned to be able to display to the neighbours the whole of her
+laundry--and Bindle's. Herself a connoisseur of garments that passed
+through the wash-tub, she knew that those of her house could hold their
+own, as joyously white and playful in the breeze as any that her
+neighbours were able to produce.
+
+She had suffered with a still tongue; yet it had not turned aside wrath,
+particularly her own wrath. Instinctively, her thoughts reverted to the
+time when an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were regarded as
+legal tender.
+
+All that night and the next day she pondered. When Bindle returned on
+the Wednesday evening, he found her almost light-hearted. "Gospel
+Bells", Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn, was going with a rare swing, and
+during the meal that followed, she was bordering on the conversational.
+
+Several times he regarded her curiously.
+
+"Somethink's up," he muttered; but, too wise in his experience, he made
+no endeavour to probe the mystery.
+
+For the rest of the week Mrs. Bindle spent every odd moment she could
+spare from her domestic duties in collecting what she mentally described
+as "rubbish". She went through each room with a toothcomb. By Saturday
+night, she had accumulated in the wash-house, a pile of odds and ends
+which, as Bindle said, would have been enough to start a rag-and-bone
+shop.
+
+Curiously enough, Mrs. Bindle did not resent his remark; instead she
+almost smiled, so marked was her expression of grim complacency.
+
+On Sunday at chapel, she sang with a vigour and fervency that attracted
+to her the curious gaze of more than one pair of eyes.
+
+"Mrs. B.'s got somethink in 'er stockin'," mumbled Bindle, as he rose
+from the supper-table that night. "Never seen 'er so cheerio in all my
+puff. I 'ope it ain't drink."
+
+Monday morning dawned, and Mrs. Bindle was up an hour earlier than
+usual, still almost blithe in her manner.
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised if she's a-goin' to run away with ole 'Earty,"
+muttered Bindle, as he took from her almost gracious hands his third
+cup of tea at breakfast.
+
+"You sings like a two-year-old, Lizzie," he ventured. "I like them
+little twiddley bits wot you been puttin' into that 'ymn."
+
+The "twiddley bits" to which Bindle referred was her rendering of
+"bells," as a word of three syllables, "be-e-ells."
+
+"You get on with your breakfast," was her retort; but there was about it
+neither reproach nor rancour.
+
+Again he looked at her curiously.
+
+"Can't make 'er out these last few days," he muttered, as he rose and
+picked up his cap. "Somethink's up!"
+
+Mrs. Bindle proceeded to wash-up the breakfast things to the tune of
+"Hold the Fort." From time to time during the morning, she would glance
+out of the window to see if Mrs. Grimps, or Mrs. Sawney had yet begun to
+"hang-out".
+
+They were usually late; but this morning they were later than usual. It
+was after ten before Mrs. Grimps appeared with the first basket of wet
+clothes. She was followed a few minutes later by Mrs. Sawney.
+
+The two women exchanged greetings, the day was too busy a one for
+anything more.
+
+As they pegged the various items of the week's wash to their respective
+lines, Mrs. Bindle watched from the back-bedroom window, her eyes like
+points of steel, her lips a grim grey line. She was experiencing the
+sensations of the general who sees the enemy delivered into his hands.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had returned to their wash-tubs,
+Mrs. Bindle descended to the scullery, where lay the heap of rubbish she
+had collected during the previous week. With great deliberation she
+proceeded to stuff it into a clothes-basket, by means of which she
+transported the mass to the bottom of the garden, a proceeding which
+required several journeys.
+
+Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps were too busily occupied to concern
+themselves with the movements of their neighbour.
+
+Her task completed, Mrs. Bindle returned to her domestic duties, and in
+due time ate a solitary dinner, Bindle being engaged too far away to
+admit of his sharing it with her. She then proceeded upstairs to perform
+her toilette, as on Monday afternoons she always arranged to go out
+"dressed". This in itself was a direct challenge to Fenton Street, which
+had to stay at home and attend to the cleansing of its linen.
+
+Her toilette finished, Mrs. Bindle slipped into the back bedroom. Below,
+her two neighbours were engaged in hanging-out the second instalment of
+their wash, the first batch having been gathered-in ready for the
+mangle. After that, they would eat their mid-day meal. Although no
+gossip, Mrs. Bindle was not unobservant, and she knew the movements of
+her neighbours as well as they knew hers.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, the front door of No. 7 banged-to. Mrs.
+Bindle, in brown alpaca, a brown bonnet with a dash of purple, and
+biscuit-coloured gloves, was going to see her niece, Millie Dixon, née
+Hearty, with whom she had arranged to spend the afternoon.
+
+
+IV
+
+"Mrs. Sawney! Mrs. Sawney! Come and look at your clothes!"
+
+Mrs. Grimps, her hands on the top of the fence, shouted her thrilling
+appeal across the intervening garden.
+
+Mrs. Sawney appeared, as if propelled from her scullery door by some
+unseen force.
+
+For a moment she stood blinking stupidly, as dense volumes of smut-laden
+smoke ascended to the blueness of heaven from the garden of No. 7. It
+was only the smoke, however, that ascended. One glance at the piebald
+garments hanging from her linen-lines was sufficient to convince Mrs.
+Sawney of that.
+
+"It's that woman," she almost screamed, as she began to pound at the
+fence dividing her garden from that of Mrs. Bindle. "I'll show 'er."
+
+"Yes; but what about the----" Mrs. Grimps broke-off, stifled by a volume
+of dense black smoke that curled across to her. "Look at them smuts."
+
+Mrs. Bindle had taken the precaution of adding some paraffin and colza
+oil to her bonfire, which was now blazing merrily, sending forth an
+ever-increasing deluge of smuts, as if conscious of what was expected of
+it.
+
+Mrs. Sawney continued to bang on the fence, whilst Mrs. Grimps dashed
+through her house and proceeded to pound at Mrs. Bindle's front door
+with a vigour born of hate and desperation.
+
+"She's gorn out."
+
+The information was vouchsafed by a little boy in petticoats, who had
+toddled uncertainly from the other side of the street, and now stood
+clinging to the railings with grubby hands.
+
+Mrs. Grimps scurried back again to the scene of disaster.
+
+She was just in time to see Mrs. Sawney take what appeared to be the
+tail-end of a header into Mrs. Bindle's back-garden, displaying in the
+process a pair of stockings that owed little to the wash-tub, and less
+to the darning-needle.
+
+"Get some water," she gasped, as she picked herself up and once more
+consigned her hosiery to the seclusion of her skirts. Mrs. Grimps dashed
+into the scullery.
+
+A minute later she re-appeared with a large pail, from which water
+slopped as she walked. With much grunting and a considerable wetting of
+her own clothes, she succeeded in passing it over the fence to her
+neighbour.
+
+With one hand grasping the handle and the other the rim at the base,
+Mrs. Sawney staggered towards the fire and inverted the pail. Then, with
+a scream, she dropped the pail, threw her apron over her head, and ran
+from the cloud of steam and the deluge of blacks that her rash act had
+occasioned.
+
+"'Urt yerself?" enquired Mrs. Grimps, solicitously as she gazed
+mournfully at her ruined "wash", upon which big flakes of black were
+descending like locusts upon the fair lands of Pharaoh.
+
+Mrs. Sawney removed the apron from her head, and blinked up at the sky,
+as if to assure herself that the blessing of sight was still hers.
+
+"The wicked cat!" she vociferated, when she found that no damage had
+been done. "Come on, let's put it out," she exhorted as, with a swift
+movement, she picked up the pail and handed it over the fence to the
+waiting Mrs. Grimps.
+
+Ten minutes later, the fire was extinguished; but the washing was
+ruined.
+
+Mrs. Sawney gazed across the fence at a dishevelled caricature of Mrs.
+Grimps, with the full consciousness that she herself must look even
+worse. She also realised that she had to make the return journey over
+the fence, under the critical eyes of Mrs. Grimps, and that to climb a
+fence without an exposure of leg was an impossibility.
+
+Both women were wet to the skin, as neither had proved expert in the
+handing of brimming pails of water over a wooden fence; both were
+spotted like the pard; both were in their hearts breathing dire
+vengeance upon the perpetrator of the outrage, who just at that moment
+was alighting from a tram at Hammersmith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Throughout that afternoon, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited;
+grim-lipped and hard-eyed they waited. Fenton Street was to see
+something that it had not even dreamed of. Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps
+had decided unanimously to "show 'er."
+
+Their offspring had been instructed that, at the sight of Mrs. Bindle,
+they were to return hot-foot and report.
+
+The children had told their friends, and their friends had told their
+mothers, with the result that not only Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps; but
+every housewife in Fenton Street was on the qui vive.
+
+Soon after six there were cries of "Here she comes," as if Mrs. Bindle
+had been the Boat Race, followed by a sudden stampede of children.
+
+Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps rushed to action-quarters. Mrs. Sawney gave
+a stir to a pail of blacklead and water behind the front door, whilst
+Mrs. Grimps seized a soft broom, which she had saturated in water used
+for washing-up the dinner-things.
+
+The children clustered round the gate, and hung on to the railings.
+Housewives came to their doors, or appeared at their bedroom windows.
+Fenton Street loved Drama, the bigger the "D" with which it was spelled,
+the more they enjoyed it.
+
+Behind their front doors, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited and
+watched. Suddenly the crowd that had attached itself to the railings
+began to melt away, and the babel of clattering voices died down.
+Several women were seen to leave their garden-gates and walk up the
+street. Still the two grim-faced women waited behind their
+"street-doors."
+
+At length, as the last child left the railings and tore up the street,
+both women decided that something must have happened.
+
+The sight of Mrs. Sawney at her door brought Mrs. Grimps to hers, just
+as Harriet, the nine years old daughter of Mrs. Sawney, rushed up
+breathless.
+
+"She's comin'," gasped the child, whereat both women disappeared, Mrs.
+Sawney to grasp the handle of her pail, and Mrs. Grimps to seize her
+broom.
+
+When Mrs. Bindle appeared, the centre of an eddying mass of children,
+with a few women on the outer fringe, she was carrying in her arms a
+child of about five, who was whimpering pitifully. Her bonnet had
+slipped back, her right hand, from which the biscuit-coloured glove had
+been removed, was stained with blood, whilst her umbrella was being
+carried, as if it were a sacred relic, by a curly-headed little lad who
+was living his hour.
+
+At the sight of the procession, Mrs. Sawney let the handle of her pail
+fall with a clang, whilst Mrs. Grimps dropped her broom.
+
+"It's my 'Ector," she screamed, as she bolted down the garden path. "Oh,
+my God! 'e's dead."
+
+"Get some hot water," ordered Mrs. Bindle, as she pushed the mother
+aside and entered the gate. "He's cut his leg."
+
+Followed by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Grimps bolted into the house. There was
+something in Mrs. Bindle's tone that brooked of no delay.
+
+Watched by Mrs. Grimps, Mrs. Sawney, and several of their friends, Mrs.
+Bindle washed the wound and bound it up with clean white rag, in place
+of her own blood-soaked handkerchief, and she did her work with the
+thoroughness with which she did everything.
+
+When she had finished, she took the child in her arms, and for an hour
+soothed it with the assurance that it was "the bravest little precious
+in all the world." When she made to transfer her burden to its mother's
+arms, the uproar that ensued decided Mrs. Bindle to continue her
+ministrations.
+
+It was ten o'clock before she finally left Mrs. Grimps's house, and she
+did so without a word.
+
+"Who'd 'ave thought it!" remarked Mrs. Sawney, as Mrs. Bindle closed the
+gate.
+
+"She's got a way with kids," admitted Mrs. Grimps. "I will say that for
+'er," and in turning back along the dark hall, she fell over the broom
+with which she had intended to greet her neighbour.
+
+Mrs. Sawney returned to her own house and hurled a saucepan at Sandy, a
+circumstance which kept him from home for two days and three nights--he
+was not a cat to take undue risks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MRS. BINDLE ENTERTAINS
+
+
+I
+
+"Bindle!" Mrs. Bindle stepped down from a chair, protected by her
+ironing-blanket, on which she had been standing to replace a piece of
+holly that had fallen from a picture.
+
+She gazed at the mid-Victorian riot about her with obvious pride; it
+constituted her holy of holies. Upon it she had laboured for days with
+soap-and-water and furniture-polish, with evergreen and coloured
+candles, to render it worthy of the approaching festivity. She had
+succeeded only in emphasising its uncompromising atmosphere of coldness
+and angularity.
+
+Antimacassars seemed to shiver self-consciously upon the backs of
+stamped-plush chairs, photo-frames, and what she called "knick-knacks,"
+stared at one another in wide-eyed desolation; whilst chains of coloured
+paper, pale green and yellow predominating, stretched in bilious
+festoons from picture-nail to picture-nail.
+
+On the mantelpiece, in wine-coloured lustres, which were Mrs. Bindle's
+especial glory, two long candles reared aloft their pink nakedness. They
+were never to be lit and they knew it; chilly, pink and naked they
+would remain, eventually to be packed away once more in the
+cardboard-box, from which for years they had been taken to grace each
+successive festivity.
+
+It had always been Bindle's ambition to light these candles, which were
+probably the most ancient pieces of petroleum-wax in the kingdom; but he
+lacked the moral courage.
+
+"Funny thing you can't be clean without stinkin' like this," he had
+mumbled that morning, as he sniffed the air, reeking of turpentine with
+an underlying motif of yellow-soap. "I suppose 'appiness is like drink,"
+he added, "it takes people different ways."
+
+Passing over to the sideboard, Mrs. Bindle gazed down at the
+refreshments: sausage-rolls, sandwiches, rock-cakes, blanc-mange,
+jellies, three-cornered tarts, exuding their contents at every joint,
+chocolate-shape, and other delicacies.
+
+In the centre stood a large open jam-tart made on a meat-dish. It was
+Mrs. Bindle's masterpiece, a tribute alike to earth and to heaven. On
+the jam, in letters contrived out of strips of pastry, appeared the
+exhortation, "Prepare to Meet Thy God."
+
+Bindle had gasped at the sight of this superlative work of art and
+religion. "That's a funny sort o' way to give a cove a appetite," he had
+murmured. "If it 'adn't been Mrs. B., I'd 'ave said it was a joke."
+
+It was with obvious satisfaction that Mrs. Bindle viewed her handiwork.
+At the sight of an iced-cake, sheltering itself behind a plate of
+bananas, she smiled. Here again her devotional instincts had triumphed.
+On the uneven white surface, in irregular letters of an uncertain blue,
+was the statement, "The Wages of Sin is Death."
+
+"Well, well, it ain't my idea of 'appiness."
+
+She span round to find Bindle, who had entered unheard, gazing dubiously
+at the tart bearing the disconcerting legend.
+
+"What's not your idea of happiness?" she demanded.
+
+He grinned genially across at her.
+
+"You'd like beer-bottles on the mantelpiece, I suppose," she continued,
+"and clay pipes and spittoons and----"
+
+"Not for me, Mrs. B.," he retorted; "no one ain't never known me miss
+the fire-place yet."
+
+Mrs. Bindle's lips tightened, as if she were striving to restrain the
+angry words that were eager to leap out.
+
+She had planned a musical evening, with the object of assisting her
+brother-in-law in his aspirations as trainer of the choir at the Alton
+Road Chapel, a post which had recently fallen vacant.
+
+By inviting some of the more humble members of the choir, those on a
+higher social plane than her own would scarcely be likely to accept,
+Mrs. Bindle had thought to further Mr. Hearty's candidature.
+
+She recognised that their influence would be indirect in its action; but
+even that, she decided, would be an asset.
+
+Mr. Hearty had readily consented to lend his harmonium, and had sent it
+round by his van. It took two men and a boy, together with Mr. Hearty
+and Mrs. Bindle, a long time to persuade it along the narrow passage.
+Here it had incontinently stuck for nearly an hour. It was not until
+Bindle returned, to bring his professional experience to bear, that it
+had been coaxed into the parlour.
+
+Christmas was near at hand, and for weeks past the choir had been
+working under forced-draught, practising carols. That had given Mrs.
+Bindle the idea of devoting her evening entirely to seasonable music.
+
+"Wot jer call me for?" demanded Bindle presently, remembering the reason
+of his presence.
+
+"Don't forget to get a pail of coals and put it in the kitchen," she
+ordered.
+
+"We shan't want no coals, Mrs. B., with all that 'ot stuff we got
+a-comin'," he muttered lugubriously. "Why ain't we got a bit o'
+mistletoe?" he demanded.
+
+"Don't be disgusting," she retorted.
+
+"Disgustin'!" he cried innocently. "There ain't nothink disgustin' in a
+bit o' mistletoe."
+
+"I won't have such things in my house," she announced with decision.
+"You've got a lewd mind."
+
+"There ain't nothink lood in kissin' a gal under the mistletoe," he
+demurred, "or under anythink else," he added as an after-thought.
+
+"You're nasty-minded, Bindle, and you know it."
+
+"Well, wot are we goin' to do at a party if there ain't goin' to be no
+kissin'?" he persisted, looking about him with unwonted despondency.
+
+"Mr. Hearty has lent us his harmonium!" she said with unction, gazing
+reverently across at the instrument, which was the pride of her
+brother-in-law's heart.
+
+"But wot's the use of an 'armonium," he complained. "You can't play 'unt
+the slipper, or postman's knock with an 'armonium."
+
+"We're going to sing."
+
+"Wot, 'ymns?" he groaned.
+
+"No, carols," was the retort. "It's Christmas," she added as if by way
+of explanation.
+
+"Well, it don't look like it, and it don't smell like it." He sniffed
+the atmosphere with obvious disgust. "Puts me in mind of 'orse-oils," he
+added.
+
+"That's right, go on," she retorted tartly. "You're not hurting me, if
+you think it." She drew in her lips and crossed her hands in front of
+her, with Mrs. Bindle a manifestation of Christian resignation.
+
+"I don't want to 'urt you, Lizzie; but I ask you, can you see me
+a-singin' carols?" He turned towards her a despondent eye of
+interrogation. "Me, at my age?"
+
+"You're not asked to sing. You can go out and spend the evening swearing
+and drinking with your low companions." She moved over to the
+mantelpiece, and adjusted one of her beloved pink candles. "You'd only
+spoil the music," she added.
+
+"If there wasn't no music there wouldn't be no religion," he grumbled.
+"It's 'armoniums in this world and 'arps in the next. I'd sooner be a
+pussyfoot than play an 'arp."
+
+Mrs. Bindle ignored the remark, and proceeded to re-pile a plate of
+sausage-rolls to a greater symmetry, flicking an imaginary speck of
+dust from a glass-jug of lemonade.
+
+"Now mind," she cried, as he walked towards the door, "I won't have you
+spoiling my evening, you'd better go out."
+
+"An 'usband's cross-roads, or why Bindle left 'ome," he grinned as he
+turned, winked at the right-hand pink candle and disappeared, leaving
+Mrs. Bindle to gaze admiringly at her handiwork. She had laboured very
+hard in preparing for the evening's festivities.
+
+
+II
+
+Half-way down the stairs, Mrs. Bindle paused to listen. Her quick ears
+had detected the sound of voices at the back-door, and what was
+undoubtedly the clink of bottles. Continuing her descent, she entered
+the kitchen, pausing just inside the door.
+
+"That's all right, 'Op-o'-my-thumb. A dozen it is," she heard Bindle
+remark to someone in the outer darkness. There was a shrill
+"Good-night," and Bindle entered the kitchen from the scullery, carrying
+a beer-bottle under each arm and one in either hand.
+
+"Who was that?" she demanded, her eyes fixed upon the bottles.
+
+"Oh! jest a nipper wot 'ad brought somethink for me," he said with
+assumed unconcern.
+
+"What did he bring?" she demanded, her eyes still fixed on the bottles.
+
+"Some beer wot I ordered."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To drink." He looked at her as if surprised at the question.
+
+"I didn't suppose you'd bought it to wash in," was the angry retort.
+"There are four bottles in the cupboard. They'll last till Saturday. Why
+did you order more?" Mrs. Bindle was obviously suspicious.
+
+"P'raps somebody'll get dry to-night," he temporised.
+
+"Don't you tell me any of your wicked lies, Bindle," she cried angrily.
+"You know they're all temperance. How many did you order?"
+
+"Oh, jest a few," he said, depositing the bottles on the lower shelf of
+the dresser. "Nothink like 'avin' a bottle or two up yer sleeve."
+
+"Why have you got your best suit on?" She regarded with disapproval the
+blue suit and red necktie Bindle was wearing. Her eyes dropped to the
+white cuffs that only a careful manipulation of his thumbs prevented
+from slipping off altogether.
+
+"Ain't it the night of the party?" he enquired innocently.
+
+"I told you that I won't have you come in, you with your common ways and
+low talk."
+
+"That's all right," he replied cheerfully. "I'm a-goin' to sit in the
+kitchen."
+
+"And what good will that do you?" she demanded suspiciously. "Another
+time, when I'm alone, you can go out fast enough. Now because I've got a
+few friends coming, nothing will move you."
+
+"But I want to 'ear the music," he protested. "P'raps I'll get to like
+carols if I 'ear enough of 'em," he added, with the air of one who
+announces that some day he hopes to acquire a taste for castor-oil.
+
+"You're enough to try the patience of a saint," she cried, still eyeing
+the bottles of beer. "I suppose you're up to some devilment. It wouldn't
+be you to let me enjoy myself."
+
+"I likes to see you enjoyin' yerself, Lizzie," he protested. "'Ow'd you
+like ole Ginger to run in an'----?"
+
+"If that man enters my house I'll insult him!" she cried, her eyes
+glinting angrily.
+
+"That ain't easy," he replied cheerfully, "unless you was to drink 'is
+beer. That always gets 'is rag out."
+
+"I won't have that man in my house," she stormed. "You shall not pollute
+my home with your foul-mouthed, public-house companions. I----"
+
+"Ole Ging is all right," Bindle assured her, as he proceeded to fetch
+four more bottles from the scullery. "All you got to do is to give 'im
+some beer, play 'All is Forgiven Wot 'Appened on Peace Night,' an' let
+'im stamp 'is feet to the chorus, an' 'e's one of the cheerfullest coves
+wot you'll find."
+
+"Well, you bring him here and see what I'll do," she announced darkly.
+
+"That's all right, Mrs. B., don't you worry. I jest asked 'Uggles to run
+round an' keep me company, and Wilkie may drop in if 'e ain't too busy
+coughin'; but they shan't get mixed up with the canaries--they won't
+want to after wot I'm goin' to tell 'em, an' we'll all be as quiet as
+mice."
+
+"If you bring any of your friends into the parlour, Bindle," she cried,
+"I'll turn the gas out."
+
+"Naughty!" he admonished, wagging at her a playful forefinger. "I ain't
+a-goin' to allow----"
+
+"Stop it!" and with that she bounced out of the kitchen and dashed
+upstairs to the bedroom, banging the door behind her.
+
+"Ain't women funny," he grumbled, as he fetched the remaining four
+bottles of beer from the scullery, and placed them upon the shelf of the
+dresser. "Nice ole row there'd 'ave been if I'd said anythink about
+turnin' out the gas. That's why ole 'Earty's so keen on them choir
+practices. I bet they got a penny-in-the-slot meter, an' everybody takes
+bloomin' good care to leave all their coppers at 'ome."
+
+Overhead, Mrs. Bindle could be heard giving expression to her feelings
+in the opening and shutting of drawers.
+
+"Well, well!" he sighed philosophically, "I suppose you can't 'ave
+everythink, as the cove said when 'e found the lodger 'ad gone orf with
+'is trousers on Bank 'Oliday," and he proceeded to gather together two
+cracked tumblers, which had been censored by Mrs. Bindle as unfit for
+her guests, a large white mug, with a pink band and the remains of a
+view of Margate, and a pint jug with a pink butterfly on the spout.
+
+"We're a-goin' to enjoy ourselves, any-old-'ow," he murmured as, picking
+up a meat-dish from the dresser, he slipped into the parlour, returning
+a moment later with it piled with rock-cakes, sandwiches and
+sausage-rolls. These he hid on the bottom shelf of the dresser, placing
+a pair of boots in front of them.
+
+"Jest in time," he muttered, as Mrs. Bindle was heard descending the
+stairs. "It's--'Ullo!" he broke off, "'ere's the first appetite," as a
+knock was heard at the front door.
+
+For the next ten minutes, Mrs. Bindle was busy conducting her guests
+upstairs to "take off their things." Their escorts waited in the
+passage, clearing their throats, or stroking their chins. Convention
+demanded that they should wait to make a formal entry into the parlour
+with their wives.
+
+With his ear pressed against the kitchen door, Bindle listened with
+interest, endeavouring to identify from their voices the arrivals as
+they passed.
+
+By ten minutes past seven, the sounds in the passage had ceased--the
+guests had all come. In Mrs. Bindle's circle it was customary to take
+literally the time mentioned in the invitation, and to apologise for
+even a few minutes' lateness.
+
+In order that the Montagues should not become confused with the
+Capulets, Bindle had taken the precaution of asking his own friends to
+come to the back door. He had added that the beer would be in the
+kitchen.
+
+Mrs. Bindle had always been immovable in her determination that Bindle's
+"low public-house companions" should not have an opportunity of
+"insulting" her friends from the Alton Road Chapel.
+
+With Mrs. Bindle the first quarter-of-an-hour of her rare social
+gatherings was always a period of anguish and uncertainty. Although
+everybody knew everybody else, all were constrained and ill-at-ease.
+
+Miss Lamb kept twirling her rolled-gold bracelet round her lace-mittened
+wrist, smiling vacantly the while. Miss Death seemed unable to keep her
+hard grey eyes, set far too closely together, from the refreshment
+sideboard, whilst Mrs. Dykes, a tiny woman in a fawn skirt and a
+coral-pink blouse, was continually feeling the back of her head, as if
+anticipating some catastrophe to her hair.
+
+Mrs. Hearty, who began in a bright blue satin blouse, and ended in
+canary-coloured stockings thrust into cloth shoes with paste buckles,
+beat her breast and struggled for breath. Mr. Hearty was negative,
+conversationally he was a bankrupt, whilst Mrs. Stitchley was garrulous
+and with a purpose. She was bent upon talking down the consciousness
+that she had not been invited.
+
+Her excuse for coming, at least the excuse she made to herself, was that
+of chaperoning her daughter, a near-sighted, shapeless girl, with no
+chest and a muddy complexion, who never had and never would require such
+an attention.
+
+The others were just neuter, except Mr. Thimbell, whose acute
+nervousness and length of limb rendered him a nuisance.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was conscious that she was looking her best in a dark blue
+alpaca dress, with a cream-coloured lace yoke, which modesty had
+prompted her to have lined with the material of the dress. To her, the
+display of any portion of her person above the instep, or below the
+feminine equivalent of the "Adam's apple," was a tribute to the Mammon
+of Unrighteousness, and her dressmaker was instructed accordingly.
+
+She moved about the room, trying to make everyone feel at home, and
+succeeding only in emphasising the fact that they were all out.
+
+Everybody was anxious to get down to the serious business of the
+evening; still the social amenities had to be observed. There must be a
+preliminary period devoted to conversation.
+
+After a quarter-of-an-hour's endeavour to exchange the ideas which none
+of them possessed, Mrs. Bindle moved over to Mr. Hearty and whispered
+something, at the same time glancing across at the harmonium. There was
+an immediate look of interest and expectancy on faces which, a moment
+before, had been blank and apathetic.
+
+Mr. Goslett, a little man with high cheekbones and a criminal taste in
+neckwear, cleared his throat; Mr. Hearty surreptitiously slipped into
+his mouth an acid drop, which he had just taken from his waistcoat
+pocket; Mr. Dykes, a long, thin man, who in his youth had been known to
+his contemporaries as "Razor," drew his handkerchief with a flourish,
+and tested Mrs. Bindle's walls as if he were a priest before Jericho.
+
+Some difficulty arose as to who should play Mr. Hearty's beloved
+instrument. Mrs. Stitchley made it clear that she expected her daughter,
+Mabel, to be asked. Mrs. Bindle, however, decided that Mrs. Snarch, a
+colourless woman who sang contralto (her own contralto) and sniffed when
+she was not singing contralto, should preside; her influence with her
+fellow-members of the choir was likely to be greater. Thus in the first
+ten minutes Mrs. Bindle scored two implacable enemies and one dubious
+friend.
+
+Mrs. Snarch took her seat at the harmonium, fidgetted about with her
+skirts and blinked near-sightedly at the book of carols, which seemed
+disinclined to remain open. The others grouped themselves about her.
+
+There was a medley of strange sounds, as each member of the party took
+the necessary steps to ensure purity of vocal tone. Added to this, Mr.
+Dykes pulled his collar away from his throat and stretched his neck
+upwards, as if to clear a passage for the sound he intended to send
+forth. Mr. Goslett pushed his sandy moustache up from his full lips with
+the back of his right forefinger, whilst Miss Stitchley moistened and
+remoistened her thin, colourless lips.
+
+Then they joined together in song.
+
+After a preliminary carol, in which no one seemed to take any particular
+interest, they got off well together with "Good King Wenceslas," a prime
+favourite at the Alton Road Chapel.
+
+This evening it proved an enormous success.
+
+Miss Stitchley's shrillness clashed with Mrs. Bindle's sharpness more
+than in the preceding carol. Mr. Hearty shut his eyes more tightly and
+was woollier, Mr. Dykes got more breath behind his boom, and Mrs. Dykes
+made more mistakes in her "harmony." Mr. Goslett raised his head higher,
+looking more than ever like a chicken drinking, whilst Miss Death's
+thin, upper notes seemed to pierce even Mr. Dykes's boom, just as they
+put Miss Lamb, always uncertain as to pitch, even further off her
+stroke.
+
+Still, everyone enjoyed it immensely. Even Mrs. Stitchley, who confessed
+that she was "no 'and at singin'," croaked a few husky notes, as she sat
+acutely upright, due to a six-and-elevenpenny pair of stays she had
+bought that afternoon, nodding her head and beating time.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley never lost an opportunity of making clear her position in
+regard to music.
+
+"I'm musical, my dear," she would say. "It's in the fambly; but I don't
+sing, I 'as spasms, you know." She volunteered this information much as
+a man might seek to excuse his inability to play the French horn by
+explaining that he is addicted to bass viol.
+
+"Now that's what I call a carol," said Mrs. Stitchley, endeavouring to
+prevent the upper portion of her stay-busk from burying itself in her
+flesh. Then, with sudden inspiration, she cried, "Encore! Encore!" and
+made a motion to clap her hands; but the stay-busk took the opportunity
+of getting in a vicious dig. With a little yelp of pain, Mrs.
+Stitchley's hands flew to her rescue.
+
+Everybody was too pleased with "Good King Wenceslas" to trouble about
+Mrs. Stitchley's stay-busk. The word "encore," however, had given them
+an idea. Mr. Hearty looked interrogatingly at Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Do you think----" he began.
+
+"Shall we have it again?" she queried, and there was a chorus of pleased
+acquiescence. Everybody was determined to put a little bit more into the
+encore than into the original rendering. There was only one dissentient
+voice, that of Mr. Dykes, who was eager for "The First Noël," which gave
+him such a chance for individual effort. When out with the Chapel
+Christmas singers, Mr. Dykes had been known to awaken as many as six
+streets with a single verse of that popular carol.
+
+Mrs. Bindle almost smiled. Her party was proving a success.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley, still holding the top of her stay-busk in her left hand,
+nodded approval, her beady little eyes fixed upon the singers. She was
+awaiting an opportunity to bring from her pocket a half-quartern bottle
+containing what, if she had been caught drinking it, she would have
+described as clove-water, taken medicinally.
+
+To give colour to her assertion, she always chewed a clove after each
+reference to the bottle.
+
+At The Golden Horse, Mrs. Stitchley's clove-water was known as Old Tom
+Special.
+
+For an hour Mrs. Bindle's guests sang, encoring themselves with
+enthusiasm. Mr. Dykes got in his famous "Noël," he pronounced it
+"No-ho-hell," and everyone else seemed satisfied, if a little sore of
+throat.
+
+It was half-past eight when Mrs. Bindle decided that the time had come
+for refreshments.
+
+Throughout the evening her ears had been keenly alert for sounds from
+the kitchen; but beyond a suppressed hum of voices, she could detect
+nothing; still she was ill-at-ease. If Mrs. Hearty, for instance, knew
+that Bindle was in the house, she would certainly go over to the enemy.
+
+In the matter of catering for her guests Mrs. Bindle had nothing to
+learn. She was a good cook and delighted in providing well for those she
+entertained. Her sausage-rolls, straightforward affairs in which the
+sausage had something more than a walking-on part, were famous among her
+friends. Her blanc-mange, jam puffs, rock-cakes, and sandwiches had
+already established her reputation with those who had been privileged to
+taste them. She basked in the sunshine of the praise lavished on what
+she provided. Without it she would have felt that her party was a
+failure.
+
+This evening there was no lack of approval, cordially expressed. Mrs.
+Stitchley, who purposely had partaken of a light luncheon and no tea,
+was particularly loud in her encomiums, preluding each sausage-roll she
+took, from the sixth onwards, with some fresh adjective.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was almost happy.
+
+She was in the act of pouring out a glass of lemonade for Miss Lamb,
+when suddenly she paused. An unaccustomed sound from the kitchen had
+arrested her hand. Others heard it too, and the hum of conversation
+died away into silence, broken only by Mr. Hearty's mastication of a
+sausage-roll.
+
+Through the dividing wall came the sound of a concertina. Mrs. Bindle
+put down the jug and turned towards the door. As she did so a thin,
+nasal voice broke into song:
+
+    For 'e was oiled in every joint,
+    A bobby came up who was standin' point.
+    He blew 'is whistle to summon more,
+    Bill got 'ome on the point of 'is jaw.
+    Then 'e screamed, an' kicked, an' bit their knees,
+    As each grabbed a leg or an arm by degrees.
+    An' that's 'ow Bill Morgan was taken 'ome
+    On the night of 'is first wife's funeral.
+
+The verse was followed by a full-throated chorus, accompanied by a
+pounding as if someone were hurling bricks about.
+
+After that came silence; but for the hum of conversation, above which
+rose Bindle's voice forbidding further singing until "them next door
+'ave 'ad a go."
+
+The guests looked at one another in amazement. The set expression of
+Mrs. Bindle's face hardened, and the lines of her mouth became grim. Her
+first instinct had been to rush to the kitchen; but she decided to wait.
+She did not want a scene whilst her guests were there.
+
+Gradually the carol-singers returned to their plates and glasses, and
+Mr. Hearty's mastication was once more heard in their midst. Mr. Hearty
+always ate with relish.
+
+Unobserved by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Hearty stole out of the parlour on her
+way to investigate; a minute later Mrs. Stitchley followed. The solitude
+of the passage gave her an admirable opportunity of finishing the
+"clove-water" she had brought with her.
+
+When everyone had assured Mrs. Bindle, in answer to her pressing
+invitation to refresh themselves still further, that they "really
+couldn't, not if she were to pay them," she turned once more to Mr.
+Hearty for the necessary encouragement to start another carol.
+
+Their first effort, however, clearly showed that Mrs. Bindle's
+refreshments had taken the edge off their singing. Miss Stitchley had
+lost much of her shrillness, Mrs. Bindle was less sharp and Mr. Hearty
+more woolly. Mr. Dykes's boom was but a wraith of its former self,
+proving the truth of Mrs. Dykes's laughing remark that if he ate so many
+of Mrs. Bindle's sausage-rolls he wouldn't be able to sing at all. Only
+Miss Death was up to form, her shrill soprano still cleaving the
+atmosphere like a javelin.
+
+As the last chords of the carol died away, the concertina in the kitchen
+took up the running, followed a minute later by the same voice as
+before, singing nasally about the adventures of a particularly
+rollicking set of boon-companions who knew neither care nor curfew.
+
+At the first sound, Mrs. Bindle moved swiftly to the door, where she
+paused uncertainly. She was in a quandary. Her conception of good
+manners did not admit of a hostess leaving her guests; still something
+had to be done.
+
+At the conclusion of the verse the voice ceased; but the concertina
+wailed on. Mrs. Bindle drew breath. Her guests gazed at one another in a
+dazed sort of way. Then with a crash came the chorus, rendered with
+enthusiasm:
+
+    We'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,
+    For 'ome's the only place for weary men like us,
+    We'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,
+    For we 'aven't got the money to pay for a bus.
+    For it's only 'alf-past two,
+    An' it won't be three just yet.
+    So we'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,
+    An' lay down in the passage to be out of the wet.
+
+The applause that followed was annihilating. Accompanying it again was
+the curious banging sound which Mrs. Bindle had noticed before. She was
+sure she recognised amid the cries of approval, the sound of a woman's
+voice. That decided her. She had already noted the absence of Mrs.
+Hearty and Mrs. Stitchley.
+
+Without so much as an apology to her guests, who stood still gazing
+blankly at one another, Mrs. Bindle slipped out into the passage,
+closing the door behind her, much to the disappointment of the others.
+
+A moment later she threw open the kitchen door, conscious that one of
+the most dramatic moments of her life was at hand.
+
+Through a grey film of tobacco smoke she saw half-a-dozen men, one
+seated on the floor, another on the fender, and two on the table. All
+were smoking.
+
+About the room were dotted bottles and various drinking vessels, mostly
+cups, whilst on the mantelpiece were Bindle's white cuffs, discarded on
+account of their inconvenient habit of slipping off at every movement of
+his hands.
+
+Mrs. Hearty was seated in front of the dresser, holding a glass of beer
+in one hand and beating her breast with the other, whilst opposite to
+her sat Mrs. Stitchley, one hand still clutching the top of her
+stay-busk, an idiotic smirk upon her moist face.
+
+As Mrs. Bindle gazed upon the scene, she was conscious of a feeling of
+disappointment; no one seemed to regard her presence as any deviation
+from the normal. Mrs. Stitchley looked up and nodded. Bindle
+deliberately avoided her eye.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's attention became focussed upon the man seated on her
+fender. In his hands he grasped a concertina, before him were stretched
+a pair of thin legs in tight blue trousers. Above a violent blue necktie
+there rose a pasty face, terminating in a quiff of amazing dimensions,
+which glistened greasily in the gaslight. His heavy-lidded eyes were
+half-closed, whilst in his mouth he held a cigarette, the end of which
+was most unwholesomely chewed. His whole demeanour was that of a man who
+had not yet realised that the curtain had risen upon a new act in the
+drama.
+
+As Mrs. Bindle appeared at the kitchen door, the concertina once more
+began to speak. A moment later the musician threw back his head and gave
+tongue, like a hound baying at the moon:
+
+    For I love my mother, love 'er with all my 'eart,
+    I can see 'er now on the doorstep, the day we 'ad to part.
+    A man that's got a tanner, can always get a wife,
+    But a mother is just a treasure that comes once in a life.
+
+"Now then, ladies and gents, chorus if _you_ please," he cried.
+
+They did please, and soon Mrs. Bindle's kitchen echoed with a
+full-throated rendering of:
+
+    We all love mother, love her all the time,
+    For there ain't no other who seems to us the same.
+    From babyhood to manhood, she watches o'er our lives,
+    For it's mother, mother, mother, bless the dear old name.
+
+It was a doleful refrain, charged with cockney melancholy; yet there
+could be no doubt about the enthusiasm of the singers. Mrs. Hearty
+spilled beer over her blue satin bosom, as a result of the energy with
+which she beat time; Mrs. Stitchley's hand, the one not grasping her
+stay-busk, was also beating time, different time from Mrs. Hearty's,
+whilst two light-coloured knees rose and fell with the regularity of
+piston-rods, solving for Mrs. Bindle the mystery of the sounds like the
+tossing about of bricks she had heard in the parlour.
+
+Ginger was joining in the chorus!
+
+As the singer started the second verse, Mrs. Bindle was conscious that
+someone was behind her. She turned to find Miss Stitchley standing at
+her shoulder. A moment later she realised that the little passage was
+overflowing with carol-singers.
+
+Still she made no sign, not even when Miss Stitchley slipped past her
+and took up a position behind her mother's chair. Mrs. Bindle realised
+that she was faced with a delicate situation.
+
+The second chorus still further complicated matters. Mrs. Bindle was
+sure she heard the haunting refrain mumbled from behind her. She turned
+quickly; but treason came from the other direction. Suddenly Miss
+Stitchley burst into song, and the passage, throwing aside its
+hesitation, joined in, softly it is true, still it joined in.
+
+"Come in, everybody!" cried Mrs. Stitchley, when the chorus ceased,
+momentarily forgetful that it was Mrs. Bindle's kitchen.
+
+"Ain't 'e clever," she added, looking admiringly at the musician, who
+glanced up casually at the mistress of the house. Art Wiggins was
+accustomed to feminine worship and unlimited beer; he regarded them as
+the natural tributes to his genius.
+
+"Come in, the 'ole lot," cried Bindle cheerily, as he proceeded to
+unscrew the stopper of a bottle. "'Ave a wet, Art," he cried, addressing
+the vocalist. "You deserves it."
+
+The remainder of the parlour-party filtered into the kitchen, and Mrs.
+Bindle realised the anguish of a Louis XVIII. Her legions had gone over
+to the enemy.
+
+"Now this," remarked Mrs. Stitchley to Ginger a quarter-of-an-hour
+later, "is wot I calls a cosy evenin'."
+
+To which Ginger grumbled something about not "'oldin' wiv women."
+
+Art Wiggins was the hero of the occasion. He smoked halves of endless
+cigarettes, chewing the remainder; he drank beer like a personified
+Sahara, and a continuous stream of song flowed from his lips.
+
+When at length he paused to eat, Mrs. Stitchley took up the running,
+urged on by Bindle, to whom she had confided that, as a girl, she had
+achieved what was almost fame with, "I Heard the Mavis Singing."
+
+Art Wiggins did not know the tune; but was not to be deterred.
+
+"Carry on, mother," he cried through a mouthful of ham-sandwich, "I'll
+pick it up."
+
+The result was that Art played something strongly reminiscent of
+"Bubbles," whilst Mrs. Stitchley was telling how she had heard the mavis
+singing, to the tune of "Swanee." It was a great success until Art,
+weary of being so long out of the picture, threw "Bubbles," "Swanee,"
+Mrs. Stitchley and the mavis overboard, and broke into a narrative about
+a young man of the name of Bert, who had become enamoured of a lady
+whose abbreviated petticoats made an excellent rhyme for the hero's
+name.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley continued singing; but Art and Bert and the young lady of
+his choice, plus the concertina, left her little or no chance.
+
+Like a figure of retribution Mrs. Bindle stood in the doorway, hard of
+eye and grim of lip, whilst just behind her Mr. Hearty picked nervously
+at the quicks of his fingers.
+
+The other guests had proved opportunists. They had thrown over the
+sacred for the profane.
+
+They came out particularly strong in the choruses.
+
+
+III
+
+"I never remember sich a evenin', my dear," was Mrs. Stitchley's
+valediction. "Stitchley'll be sorry 'e missed it," she added,
+indifferent to the fact that he had not been invited.
+
+She was the last to go, just as she had been the first to arrive.
+Throughout the evening she had applauded every effort of Art Wiggins to
+add to what Bindle called "the 'armony of the evenin'."
+
+"I have enjoyed it, Mrs. Bindle," said Miss Stitchley. "It was lovely."
+
+With these encomiums ringing in her ears, and confirmed by what she
+herself had seen and heard, Mrs. Bindle closed the door and returned to
+the kitchen.
+
+Bindle watched her uncertainly as she tidied up the place, whilst he
+proceeded to arrange upon the dresser the beer-bottles, sixteen in
+number and all empty.
+
+As a rule he could anticipate Mrs. Bindle's mood; but to-night he was
+frankly puzzled. When he had asked Huggles and Wilkes to drop in "for a
+jaw," he had not foreseen that on the way they would encounter Ginger,
+his cousin Art Wiggins and two bosom friends of Art, nor could he be
+expected to foresee that Art went nowhere without his concertina. It was
+as much part of him as his elaborate quiff.
+
+Their arrival had inspired Bindle with something akin to panic. For a
+long time he had striven to mute Art's musical restiveness. At length he
+had been over-ruled by the others, and Art had burst into song about
+Bill Morgan and his first wife's funeral. After that, as well try to dam
+Niagara as seal those lips of song.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's grim silence as she moved about the kitchen disconcerted
+Bindle. He was busy speculating as to what was behind it all.
+
+"Been a 'appy sort of evenin'," he remarked at length, as he proceeded
+to knock the ashes out of his pipe.
+
+Mrs. Bindle made no response; but continued to gather together the
+plates and glasses and place them in two separate bowls in the sink.
+
+"Seemed to enjoy theirselves," he ventured a few minutes later. "Joined
+in the choruses too."
+
+Bindle's remark was like a shot fired at a waterspout, Mrs. Bindle's
+wrath burst its bounds and engulfed him.
+
+"One of these days you'll kill me," she shrilled, dropping into a chair,
+"and then p'raps you'll be 'appy."
+
+"Wot 'ave I done now?" he enquired.
+
+"You've made me ashamed of you," she stormed. "You've humiliated me
+before all those people. What must they think, seein' me married to one
+who will suffer unto the third and fourth generation and----"
+
+"But I can't----"
+
+"You will and you know it," she cried. "Look at the men you 'ad 'ere
+to-night. You never been a proper 'usband to me. Here have I been
+toiling and moiling, inching and pinching, working my fingers to the
+bone for you, and then you treat me like this."
+
+Bindle began to edge almost imperceptibly towards the door.
+
+"See how you've humiliated me," her voice began to quaver. "What will
+they say at the Chapel? They know all about you, whistling on Sundays
+and spending your time in public-houses, while your wife is working
+herself to skin an' bone to cook your meals and mend your clothes.
+What'll they say now they've seen the low companions you invite to your
+home? They'll see how you respect your wife."
+
+Still Bindle made no retort; but in a subdued murmur hummed "Gospel
+Bells," Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn, which he used as a snake-charmer
+uses a flute.
+
+"You're glad, I know it," she continued, exasperated by his silence.
+"Glad to see your wife humiliated. Look at you now! You're glad." Her
+voice was rising hysterically. "One of these days I shall go out and
+never return, and then you'll be----"
+
+Like a tornado the emotional super-storm burst, and Mrs. Bindle was in
+the grip of screaming hysterics.
+
+She laughed, she cried, she exhorted, she reproached. Everything evil
+that had ever happened to her, or to the universe, was directly due to
+the blackness of Bindle's heart and the guiltiness of his conscience. He
+was the one barrier between her and earthly heaven. He had failed where
+Mr. Hearty had succeeded. She poured upon him a withering stream of
+invective,--and she did it at the top of her voice.
+
+At first Bindle stared; then he gazed vaguely about him. He made a
+sudden dive for the cupboard, rummaged about until he found the
+vinegar-bottle. Pouring some out into a saucer, he filled it up with
+water and returned to where Mrs. Bindle sat, slopping the liquid as he
+went.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was now engaged in linking him up with Sodom and Gomorrah,
+the fate that befell Lot's wife and Dr. Crippen. Then, with a final
+scream, she slipped from her chair to the floor, where she lay moaning
+and sobbing.
+
+With an earnest, anxious look in his eyes, Bindle knelt beside her and
+from the saucer proceeded to sprinkle her generously with vinegar and
+water, until in odour she resembled a freshly-made salad.
+
+When he had sprinkled the greater part of the contents of the saucer on
+to her person, he sat back on his heels and, with grave and anxious
+eyes, regarded her as a boy might who has lighted the end of a rocket
+and waits expectantly to see the result.
+
+Gradually the storm of emotion died down and finally ceased. He still
+continued to gaze fixedly at Mrs. Bindle, convinced that
+vinegar-and-water was the one and only cure for hysterics.
+
+Presently, she straightened herself. She moved, then struggling up into
+a sitting position, she looked about her. The unaccustomed smell
+assailed her nostrils she sniffed sharply two or three times.
+
+"What have you been doing?" she demanded.
+
+"I been bringin' you to," he said, his forehead still ribbed with
+anxiety.
+
+"Oh! you beast, you!" she moaned, as she struggled to her feet. "You
+done it on purpose."
+
+"Done wot on purpose?" he enquired.
+
+"Poured vinegar all over me and soaked me to the skin. You've spoilt my
+dress. You----" and with a characteristically sudden movement, she
+turned and fled from the room and upstairs, banging the door with a
+ferocity that shook the whole house.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "An' me thinkin' she'd like me to bring
+'er round," and he slipped out into the parlour, which wore a very
+obvious morning-after-the-party aspect. His object was to give Mrs.
+Bindle an opportunity of returning. He knew her to be incapable of going
+to bed with her kitchen untidy.
+
+He ate a sausage-roll and a piece of the admonitory jam-tart, listening
+keenly for sounds of Mrs. Bindle descending the stairs. Finally he
+seated himself on the stamped-plush couch and absent-mindedly lighted
+his pipe.
+
+Presently he heard a soft tread upon the stairs, as if someone were
+endeavouring to descend without noise. He sighed his relief.
+
+Ten minutes later he rose and stretched himself sleepily. There were
+obvious sounds of movement in the kitchen.
+
+"Now if I wasn't the bloomin' coward wot I am," he remarked, as he took
+a final look round, "I'd light them two candles; but I ain't got the
+pluck."
+
+With that he turned out the gas and closed the door.
+
+"You take those bottles into the scullery and be quick about it," was
+Mrs. Bindle's greeting as he entered the kitchen.
+
+She fixed her eye on the platoon of empty beer-bottles that Bindle had
+assembled upon the dresser.
+
+He paused in the act of digging into his pipe with a match-stick. He had
+been prepared for the tail-end of a tornado, and this slight admonitory
+puff surprised him.
+
+"Well! did you hear?"
+
+Without a word the pipe was slipped into his pocket, and picking up a
+brace of bottles in either hand he passed into the scullery.
+
+As he did so a strange glint sprang into Mrs. Bindle's eyes. With a
+panther-like movement she dashed across to the scullery door, slammed it
+to and turned the key. A second later the kitchen was in darkness, and
+Mrs. Bindle was on her way upstairs to bed.
+
+The continuous banging upon the scullery door as she proceeded leisurely
+to undress was as sweet music to her ears.
+
+That night Bindle slept indifferently well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE COMING OF JOSEPH THE SECOND
+
+
+"Why can't you drink your tea like a Christian?" Mrs. Bindle hurled the
+words at Bindle as if she hoped they would hit him.
+
+He gazed at her over the edge of the saucerful of tea, which he had
+previously cooled by blowing noisily upon it. A moment later he
+proceeded to empty the saucer with a sibilant sound suggestive of
+relish. He then replaced it upon the table.
+
+"Might as well be among pigs, the way you behave at table," she snapped
+and, as if to emphasise her own refinement in taking liquids, she lifted
+her cup delicately to her lips, the little finger of her right hand
+crooked at an awkward angle.
+
+Bindle leaned slightly towards her, his hand to his ear. Ignoring his
+attitude, she replaced the cup in the saucer.
+
+"You done that fine, Mrs. B. I didn't 'ear a sound," and he grinned in
+that provocative manner which always fanned the flame of her anger.
+
+"Pity you don't learn yourself, instead of behaving as you do."
+
+"But 'ow am I to know 'ow a Christian drinks?" he demanded, harking
+back to Mrs. Bindle's remark. "There's 'Earty now, 'e's a Christian; but
+he sucks in 'is whiskers as if 'e was 'ungry."
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me," was the impatient response, as she proceeded to
+pour herself out another cup of tea.
+
+"Wotjer marry me for, then? I told you I was always chatty at
+breakfast."
+
+"Don't be disgusting!" she cried angrily. He stared at her in genuine
+astonishment. "You know I never allowed you to say such things to me
+before we were married."
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered as he pushed across his cup that it
+might be refilled.
+
+"Millie's coming this afternoon."
+
+"Millie!" he cried, his face beaming. "She all right again?"
+
+"Don't be disgusting," she said.
+
+"Disgustin'," he repeated vaguely. Then understanding came to him.
+
+Millie Dixon, née Hearty, had, some weeks previously, presented her
+husband with "a little Joe." These had been her first words to Charley
+Dixon when he, still partially in the grip of the terror through which
+he had passed, had been taken by the nurse to be introduced to his son
+and heir, whilst a pale, tired Millie smiled bravely up at him.
+
+To Mrs. Bindle the very mention of the word "babies" in mixed company
+was an offence. The news that he was an uncle had reached Bindle from
+Mrs. Hearty, Mr. Hearty sharing his sister-in-law's views upon
+reticence in such delicate and personal matters.
+
+"She goin' to bring it with 'er?" Bindle enquired eagerly; but Mrs.
+Bindle, anticipating such a question, had risen and, going over to the
+sink, had turned on the tap, allowing the question to pass in a rushing
+of water.
+
+"Funny feelin' like that about babies," he muttered as he rose from the
+table, his meal completed. "I suppose that's why she wouldn't let me
+keep rabbits."
+
+"Charley's coming in later; he's going to mend Aunt Anne's musical-box,"
+was Mrs. Bindle's next announcement.
+
+Bindle whistled incredulously.
+
+"What's the matter now?"
+
+"You ain't goin' to trust 'im with Ole Dumb Abraham, are you?" he asked
+in a hushed voice.
+
+"And why not, pray?" she challenged. "Millie says Charley is very clever
+at mending things, and it's never played."
+
+Bindle said nothing. The musical-box had been left to Mrs. Bindle by
+"poor Aunt Anne"--Mrs. Bindle referred to all dead relatives as "poor";
+it was her one unconscious blasphemy. Dumb Abraham, as Bindle called the
+relic, had always been the most sacred among Mrs. Bindle's household
+gods. It had arrived dumb, and dumb it had remained, as she would never
+hear of it leaving the house to be put in order.
+
+If Bindle ever went into the parlour after dark, he was always told to
+be careful of Aunt Anne's musical box. Many a battle had been waged over
+its dumb ugliness. Once he had rested for a moment upon its glassy
+surface a half-smoked cigar, a thoughtless act which had resulted in one
+of the stormiest passages of their married life.
+
+"Well!" challenged Mrs. Bindle, as he remained silent.
+
+"I didn't say anythink," he mumbled, picking up his cap and making for
+the door, thankful that it was Saturday, and that he would be home in
+time to see his beloved niece.
+
+That afternoon Bindle arrived home with his pockets bulging, and several
+parcels of varying sizes under his arm.
+
+"What have you got there?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, who was occupied in
+spreading a white cloth upon the kitchen table.
+
+"Oh! jest a few things for 'is Nibs," was the response.
+
+"For who?"
+
+"The nipper," he explained, as he proceeded to unburden himself of the
+parcels, laying them on the dresser.
+
+"I wish you'd try and talk like a Christian," and she banged a metal
+tea-tray upon the table.
+
+Bindle ignored her remark. He was engaged in taking from its wrappings a
+peculiarly hideous rag-doll.
+
+Mrs. Bindle paused in her preparations to watch the operation.
+
+"What's that for?" she demanded aggressively.
+
+"Millie's kid," he replied, devoting himself to the opening of other
+packages, and producing a monkey-on-a-stick, an inexpensive teddy-bear,
+a jack-in-the-box and several metal animals, which on being blown
+through emitted strident noises.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, wasting money on hideous things
+like that. They'd frighten the poor child to death."
+
+"Frighten 'im!" he cried. "These ain't goin' to frighten 'im. You wait
+an' 'ear wot 'e's got to say about 'em."
+
+"You just clear those things out of my kitchen," was the uncompromising
+rejoinder. "I won't have the poor child sent into convulsions because
+you're a fool."
+
+There was something in her voice which caused Bindle meekly to gather
+together the toys and carry them out of the kitchen and upstairs, where
+he placed them in a drawer devoted entirely to his own possessions.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," he murmured, as he laid them one beside another.
+"And me a-thinkin' they'd make 'im laugh;" with that he closed the
+drawer, determined that, at least, Millie should see the toys that were
+as much a tribute to her as to her offspring.
+
+"Fancy little Millikins 'avin' a kid all of 'er own," he muttered, as he
+descended the stairs, "'er wot I used to dangle on my knee till she
+crowed again. Well, well," he added as he opened the kitchen door, "we
+ain't none of us gettin' younger."
+
+"Wot's that?" enquired Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Merely a sort o' casual remark that none of us ain't puttin' back the
+clock."
+
+Mrs. Bindle sniffed disdainfully, and busied herself with preparations
+for tea.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before that Millikins was comin'?" he enquired.
+
+"Because you're never in as any other decent husband is."
+
+He recognised the portents and held his peace.
+
+When Mrs. Bindle was busy, her temper had a tendency to be on what
+Bindle called "the short side," and then even her favourite hymn,
+"Gospel Bells," frequently failed to stem the tide of her wrath.
+
+"Ain't we goin' to 'ave tea in the parlour?" he enquired presently, as
+Mrs. Bindle smoothed the cloth over the kitchen table.
+
+"No, we're not," she snapped, thinking it unnecessary to add that Millie
+had particularly requested that she might have it "in your lovely
+kitchen," because she was "one of the family."
+
+Although Bindle infinitely preferred the kitchen to that labyrinth of
+furniture and knick-knacks known as the parlour, he felt that the
+occasion demanded the discomfort consequent upon ceremony. He was,
+however, too wise to criticise the arrangement; for Mrs. Bindle's temper
+and tongue were of a known sharpness that counselled moderation.
+
+She had made no mention of the time of Millie's arrival, and Bindle
+decided not to take the risk of enquiring. He contented himself with
+hovering about, getting under Mrs. Bindle's feet, as she expressed it,
+and managing to place himself invariably in the exact spot she was
+making for.
+
+If he sat on a chair, Mrs. Bindle seemed suddenly to discover that it
+required dusting. If he took refuge in a corner, Mrs. Bindle promptly
+dived into it with an "Oh! get out of my way, do," and he would do a
+swift side-step, only to make for what was the high-road of her next
+strategic move.
+
+"Why don't you go out like you always do?" she demanded at one point.
+
+"Because Millikins is comin'," he replied simply.
+
+"Yes, you can stay at home for--when somebody's coming," she amended,
+"but other days you leave me alone for weeks together."
+
+"But when I do stay at 'ome you 'ustles me about like a stray goat," he
+complained, only just succeeding in avoiding a sudden dash on Mrs.
+Bindle's part.
+
+"That's right, go on. Blame everything on to me," she cried, as she made
+a swift dive for the stove, and proceeded to poke the fire as if
+determined to break the fire-brick at the back. "If you'd only been a
+proper 'usband to me I might have been different."
+
+Bindle slipped across the kitchen and stepped out into the passage. Here
+he remained until Mrs. Bindle suddenly threw open the kitchen door.
+
+"What are you standing there for?" she demanded angrily.
+
+"So as not to get in the way," was the meek reply.
+
+"You want to be able to tell Millie that you were turned out of the
+kitchen," she stormed. "I know you and your mean, deceitful ways. Well,
+stay there if you like it!" and she banged the door, and Bindle heard
+the key turn in the lock.
+
+"There's one thing about Mrs. B.," he remarked, as he leaned against the
+wall, "she ain't dull."
+
+When at length the expected knock came, it was Mrs. Bindle who darted
+out and opened the door to admit Millie Dixon, carrying in her arms the
+upper end of what looked like a cascade of white lace.
+
+A sudden fit of shyness seized Bindle, and he retreated to the kitchen;
+whilst aunt and niece greeted one another in the passage.
+
+"Where's Uncle Joe?" he heard Millie ask presently.
+
+"I'm 'ere, Millikins," he called-out, "cookin' the veal for that there
+young prodigal."
+
+A moment later Millie, flushed and happy, fluttered into the room, still
+holding the cascade of lace.
+
+"Darling Uncle Joe," she cried, advancing towards him.
+
+He took a step backwards, a look of awe in his eyes, which were fixed
+upon the top of the cascade.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me, Uncle Joe?" she asked, holding up her
+face.
+
+"Kiss you, my dear, why----" Bindle was seized with a sudden huskiness
+in his voice, as he leaned forward gingerly and kissed the warm red lips
+held out to him.
+
+"Is that It?" he asked, looking down with troubled eyes at Millie's
+burden.
+
+"This is Little Joe," she said softly, the wonder-light of motherhood in
+her eyes, as she placed one foot on the rail of a chair to support her
+precious burden, thus releasing her right hand to lift the veil from a
+red and puckered face, out of which gazed a pair of filmy blue eyes.
+
+"Ooooooosssss." Instinctively Bindle drew a deep breath as he bent a few
+inches forward.
+
+For fully a minute he stood absorbing all there was to be seen of Joseph
+the Second.
+
+"'E ain't very big, is 'e?" he enquired, raising his eyes to Millie's.
+
+"He's only six weeks old," snapped Mrs. Bindle, who had followed Millie
+into the kitchen and now stood, with ill-concealed impatience, whilst
+Bindle was gazing at the infant. "What did you expect?" she demanded.
+
+"Don't 'e look 'ot?" said Bindle at length, his forehead seamed with
+anxiety.
+
+"Hot, Uncle Joe?" enquired Millie, unable to keep from her voice a tinge
+of the displeasure of a mother who hears her offspring criticised.
+
+"I mean 'e don't look strong," he added hastily, conscious that he had
+said the wrong thing.
+
+"Don't be silly, Uncle Joe, he's just a wee little baby, aren't you,
+bootiful boy?" and she gazed at the red face in a way that caused Bindle
+to realise that his niece was now a woman.
+
+"'E's the very spit of 'is old uncle, ain't 'e?" and he turned to Mrs.
+Bindle for corroboration.
+
+She ignored the remark; but Millie smiled sympathetically.
+
+"I 'ad a takin' way with me when I was a little 'un," continued Bindle
+reminiscently. "Why, once I was nearly kissed by a real lady--one with a
+title, too."
+
+"Oh! do tell me, Uncle Joe," cried Millie, looking at him with that odd
+little lift of the brows, which always made Charley want to kiss her.
+She had heard the story a score of times before.
+
+"Well, 'er 'usband was a-tryin' to get into Parliament, an' 'is wife,
+wot was the lady, came round a-askin' people to vote for 'im. Seein' me
+in my mother's arms, she says, 'Wot a pretty child.' You see, Millikins,
+looks was always my strong point," and he paused in the narrative to
+grin.
+
+"Then she bends down to kiss me," he continued, "an' jest at that moment
+wot must I go and do but sneeze, an' that's 'ow I missed a kiss an' 'er
+'usband a vote."
+
+"Poor Uncle Joe," laughed Millie, making a little motion with her arms
+towards Mrs. Bindle.
+
+Without a word, Mrs. Bindle took the precious bundle of lace, out of
+which two filmy eyes gazed vacantly. With a swaying movement she began
+to croon a meaningless tune, that every now and then seemed as if it
+might develop into "Gospel Bells"; yet always hesitated on the brink and
+became diverted into something else.
+
+The baby turned on her a solemn, appraising look of interrogation, then,
+apparently approving of the tune, settled down comfortably to enjoy it.
+
+Bindle regarded Mrs. Bindle with wonder. Into her eyes had crept a
+something he had only once seen there before, and that was on the
+occasion he had brought Millie to Fenton Street when she left home.
+
+Seeing that "Baby" was content, Millie dropped into a chair with a
+tired little sigh, her eyes fixed upon the precious bundle of lace
+containing what would one day be a man.
+
+Mrs. Bindle continued to sway and croon in a way that seemed to Little
+Joe's entire satisfaction.
+
+"Aren't you glad we called him after you, Uncle Joe?" said Millie,
+tearing her eyes with difficulty from the bundle and turning them upon
+Bindle.
+
+"Yer aunt told me," he said simply.
+
+"Oh! I do hope he'll grow up like you, Uncle Joe, dear Uncle Joe," she
+cried, clasping her hands in her earnestness, as if that might help to
+make good her wish.
+
+"Like me?" There was wonder and incredulity in his voice.
+
+"Charley says he _must_ grow up like you, darling Uncle Joe. You
+see----" She broke off as Bindle suddenly turned and, without a word,
+made for the door. A moment later it banged-to behind him arousing Mrs.
+Bindle from her pre-occupation.
+
+"Where's your Uncle gone?" she enquired, lifting her eyes from their
+absorbed contemplation of the flaming features of her nephew.
+
+"He's--he's gone to fetch something," lied Millie. Instinctively she
+felt that this was an occasion that called for anything but the truth.
+She had seen the unusual brightness of Bindle's eyes.
+
+From the passage he was heard vigorously blowing his nose.
+
+"It's them toys he's after," said Mrs. Bindle, with scornful
+conviction.
+
+"Toys?" Millie looked up enquiringly.
+
+"He bought a lot of hideous things for this little precious," and her
+eyes fell upon the bundle in her arms, her lips breaking into a curve
+that Bindle had never seen.
+
+"You see, Millie," she continued, "he doesn't know. We've neither chick
+nor child of----" She broke off suddenly, and bowed her head low over
+the baby.
+
+In a second Millie was on her feet, her arm round Mrs. Bindle's
+shoulders.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lizzie!" she cried, her voice a little unsteady. "Darling
+Aunt Lizzie. I--I know--I----"
+
+At this point Joseph the Second, objecting to the pressure to which he
+was being subjected between the two emotional bosoms, raised his voice
+in protest, just as Bindle entered, his arms full of the toys he had
+bought.
+
+He stood in the doorway, gaping with amazement.
+
+As Mrs. Bindle caught sight of him, she blinked rapidly.
+
+"Don't bring that rubbish in here," she cried with a return to her
+normal manner. "You'll frighten the child out of its life."
+
+"Oh! Uncle Joe," cried Millie, as Bindle deposited the toys on the
+table. "I think you're the darlingest uncle in all the world."
+
+There were tears in the eyes she turned on him.
+
+Mrs. Bindle swung her back on the pair, as Bindle proceeded to explain
+the virtues and mechanism of his purchases. She was convinced that such
+monstrosities would produce in little Joseph nothing less than
+convulsions, probably resulting in permanent injury to his mind.
+
+Whilst they were thus engaged, Mrs. Bindle walked up and down the
+kitchen, absorbed in the baby.
+
+"Auntie Lizzie," cried Millie presently, "please bring Little Joe here."
+
+Mrs. Bindle hesitated. "They'll frighten him, Millie," she said, with a
+gentleness in her voice that caused Bindle to look quickly up at her.
+
+To disprove the statement, and with all the assurance of a young mother,
+Millie seized the rag-doll and a diminutive golliwog, and held them over
+the recumbent form of Joseph the Second.
+
+In an instant a pudgy little hand was thrust up, followed immediately
+after by another, and Joseph the Second demonstrated with all his
+fragile might that, as far as toys were concerned, he was at one with
+his uncle.
+
+Bindle beamed with delight. Seizing the monkey-on-a-stick he proceeded
+vigorously to work it up and down. The pudgy hands raised themselves
+again.
+
+"Oh! let Uncle Joe hold him," cried Millie, in ecstasy at the sight of
+the dawning intelligence on the baby's face.
+
+"Me!" cried Bindle in horror, stepping back as if he had been asked to
+foster-mother a vigorous young rattlesnake. "Me 'old It?" He looked
+uncertainly at Mrs. Bindle and then again at Millie. "Not for an old-age
+pension."
+
+"He'll make him cry," said Mrs. Bindle with conviction, hugging Little
+Joe closer and increasing the swaying movement.
+
+"Oh yes, you must!" cried Millie gaily. "I'll take him, Auntie Lizzie,"
+she said, turning to Mrs. Bindle, who manifested reluctance to
+relinquish the bundle.
+
+"I might 'urt 'im," protested Bindle, retreating a step further, his
+forehead lined with anxiety.
+
+"Now, Uncle Joe," commanded Millie, extending the bundle, "put your arms
+out."
+
+Bindle extended his hands as might a child who is expecting to be caned.
+There was reluctance in the movement, and a suggestion that at any
+moment he was prepared to withdraw them suddenly.
+
+"Not that way," snapped Mrs. Bindle, with all the scorn of a woman's
+superior knowledge.
+
+Millie settled the matter by thrusting the bundle into Bindle's arms and
+he had, perforce, to clasp it.
+
+He looked about him wildly, then, his eyes happening to catch those of
+Joseph the Second, he forgot his responsibilities, and began winking
+rapidly and in a manner that seemed entirely to Little Joe's
+satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, Auntie Lizzie, look," cried Millie. "Little Joe loves Uncle Joe
+already." The inspiration of motherhood had enabled her to interpret a
+certain slobbering movement about Little Joe's lips as affection.
+
+"Oh, look!" she cried again, as one chubby little hand was raised as if
+in salutation. "Auntie Lizzie----" She suddenly broke off. She had
+caught sight of the tense look on Mrs. Bindle's face as she gazed at the
+baby, and the hunger in her eyes.
+
+Without a word she seized the bundle from Bindle's arms and placed it
+in those of her aunt, which instinctively curved themselves to receive
+the precious burden.
+
+"There, darling Joeykins," she crooned as she bent over her baby's face,
+as if to shield from Mrs. Bindle any momentary disappointment it might
+manifest. "Go to Auntie Lizzie."
+
+"'Ere, wot 'ave I----?" began Bindle, when he was interrupted by a knock
+at the outer door.
+
+"That's Charley," cried Millie, dancing towards the door in a most
+unmatronly manner. "Come along, Uncle Joe, he's going to mend the
+musical-box," and with that she tripped down the passage, had opened the
+door and was greeting her husband almost before Bindle had left the
+kitchen.
+
+"Come in here," she cried, opening the parlour door, and hardly giving
+Bindle time to greet Charley.
+
+"'Ere," cried Bindle, "why----?"
+
+"Never mind, Uncle Joe, Charley's going to mend the musical-box."
+
+"But wot about it--'im," Bindle corrected himself, indicating the
+kitchen with a jerk of his thumb.
+
+"Charley's-going-to-mend-the-musical-box," she repeated with great
+distinctness. And again Bindle marvelled at the grown-upness of her.
+
+He looked across at his nephew, a puzzled expression creasing his
+forehead.
+
+"Better do as she says, Uncle Joe," laughed Charley. "It saves time."
+
+"But----" began Bindle.
+
+"There it is, Charley," cried Millie, indicating a mahogany object,
+with glass top and sides that gave an indelicate view of its internal
+organism. Being a dutiful husband, Charley lifted down the box and
+placed it on to the table.
+
+"For Gawd's sake be careful of Ole Dumb Abraham," cried Bindle. "If----"
+
+"Of who?" cried Millie, her pretty brows puckered.
+
+Bindle explained, watching with anxious eyes as Charley lifted the
+treasure from the small table on which it habitually rested, and placed
+it upon the centre table, where Millie had cleared a space.
+
+Charley's apparent unconcern gave Bindle an unpleasant feeling at the
+base of his spine. He had been disciplined to regard the parlour as holy
+ground, and the musical-box as the holiest thing it contained.
+
+For the next three-quarters of an hour Bindle and Millie watched
+Charley, as, with deft fingers, he took the affair to pieces and put it
+together again.
+
+Finally, with much coaxing and a little oil, he got it to give forth an
+anæmic interpretation of "The Keel Row." Then it gurgled, slowed down
+and gave up the struggle, in consequence of which Charley made further
+incursions into its interior.
+
+Becoming accustomed to the thought of Aunt Anne's legacy being subjected
+to the profanation of screw-driver and oil-bottle, Bindle sat down by
+the window, and proceeded to exchange confidences with Millie, who had
+made it clear to him that her aunt and son were to be left to their
+tête-à-tête undisturbed.
+
+The conversation between uncle and niece was punctuated by snatches from
+"The Keel Row," as Charley was successful in getting the sluggish
+mechanism of Dumb Abraham into temporary motion.
+
+Occasionally he would give expression to a hiss or murmur of impatience,
+and Millie would smile across at him an intimate little smile of
+sympathy.
+
+Suddenly, gaunt tragedy stalked into the room.
+
+Crash!
+
+"My Gawd!"
+
+"Oh, Charley!"
+
+"Damn!"
+
+And Poor Aunt Anne's musical-box lay on the floor, a ruin of splintered
+glass.
+
+Charley Dixon sucked a damaged thumb, Millie clung to his arm,
+solicitous and enquiring, whilst Bindle gazed down at the broken mass,
+fear in his eyes, and a sense of irretrievable disaster clutching at his
+heart.
+
+Charley began to explain, Millie demanded to see the damaged thumb--but
+Bindle continued to gaze at the sacred relic.
+
+Five minutes later, the trio left the parlour. As noiselessly as
+conspirators they tip-toed along the passage to the kitchen door, which
+stood ajar.
+
+Through the aperture Mrs. Bindle could be seen seated at the table,
+Joseph the Second reposing in the crook of her left arm, whilst she,
+with her right hand, was endeavouring to work the monkey-on-a-stick.
+
+In her eyes was a strange softness, a smile broke the hard lines of her
+mouth, whilst from her lips came an incessant flow of baby language.
+
+For several minutes they watched. They saw Mrs. Bindle lay aside the
+monkey-on-a-stick, and bend over the babe, murmuring the sounds that
+come by instinct to every woman's lips.
+
+At a sign from Millie, they entered. Mrs. Bindle glanced over her
+shoulder in their direction; but other and weightier matters claimed her
+attention.
+
+"Lizzie," began Bindle, who had stipulated that he should break the
+awful news, urging as his reason that it had to be done with "tack." He
+paused. Mrs. Bindle took no notice; but continued to bend over Little
+Joe, making strange sounds.
+
+"Lizzie----" he began, paused, then in a rush the words came. "We broken
+the musical-box."
+
+He stopped, that the heavens might have an opportunity of falling.
+
+"Did-he-love-his-Auntie-Lizzie-blossom-um-um-um-um."
+
+Charley and Millie exchanged glances; but Bindle was too intent upon his
+disastrous mission to be conscious of anything but the storm he knew was
+about to break.
+
+"Did you 'ear, Lizzie," he continued. "We broken the musical-box.
+Smashed it all to smithereens. Done for it," he added, as if to leave no
+loophole for misconception as to the appalling nature of the tragedy.
+
+He held his breath, as one who has just tugged at the cord of a
+shower-bath.
+
+"Oh! go away do!" she cried. "Um-um-um-um-prettyums."
+
+"Pore Aunt Anne's musical-box," he repeated dully. "It's smashed."
+
+"Oh, bother the musical-box! Um-um-um-per-weshus-um-um-um."
+
+Mrs. Bindle had not even looked up.
+
+It was Millie who shepherded the others back into the parlour, where
+Bindle mopped his brow, with the air of a man who, having met death face
+to face, has survived.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" was all he said.
+
+And Millie smiled across at Charley, a smile of superior understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE
+
+
+"I wonder you allow that girl to wear such disgusting clothes."
+
+For the last five minutes Mrs. Bindle had been watching Alice, Mrs.
+Hearty's maid, as she moved about the room, tidying-up. The girl had
+just returned from her evening out, and her first act had been to bring
+Mrs. Hearty her nightly glass of Guinness and "snack of
+bread-and-cheese," an enormous crust torn from a new cottage loaf and
+plentifully spread with butter, flanked by about a quarter-of-a-pound of
+cheese. Now that the girl had left the room, Mrs. Bindle could contain
+herself no longer.
+
+Mrs. Hearty was a woman upon whom fat had descended as a disguise. Her
+manifold chins rippled downwards until they became absorbed in the
+gigantic wave of her bust. She had a generous appetite, and was damned
+with a liking for fat-forming foods.
+
+With her sister she had nothing in common; but in Bindle she had found a
+kindred spirit. The very sight of him would invariably set her heaving
+and pulsating with laughter and protestations of "Oh, Joe, don't!"
+
+For response to her sister's comment, Mrs. Hearty took a deep draught
+of Guinness and then, with a film of froth still upon her upper lip, she
+retorted, "It's 'er night out," and relapsed into wheezes and endeavours
+to regain her breath.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was not in a good humour. She had called hoping to find Mr.
+Hearty returned from choir-practice, after which was to be announced the
+deacons' decision as to who was to succeed Mr. Smithers in training the
+choir.
+
+Her brother-in-law's success was with her something between an
+inspiration and a hobby. It became the absorbing interest in life,
+outside the chapel and her home. No wife, or mother, ever watched the
+progress of a husband, or son, with keener interest, or greater
+admiration, than Mrs. Bindle that of Mr. Hearty.
+
+As a girl, she had been pleasure-loving. There were those who even went
+to the extent of regarding her as flighty. She attended theatres and
+music-halls, which she had not then regarded as "places of sin," and her
+contemporaries classified her as something of a flirt; but
+disillusionment had come with marriage. She soon realised that she had
+made the great and unforgivable mistake of marrying the wrong man. It
+turned her from the "carnal," and was the cause of her joining the Alton
+Road Chapel, at which Mr. Hearty worshipped.
+
+From that date she began a careful and elaborate preparation for the
+next world.
+
+Although she nightly sought the Almighty to forgive her her trespasses,
+volunteering the information that she in turn would forgive those who
+trespassed against her, she never forgave Bindle for his glib and ready
+tongue, which had obscured her judgment to the extent of allowing to
+escape from the matrimonial noose, a potential master-greengrocer with
+three shops.
+
+There was nothing in her attitude towards Mr. Hearty suggestive of
+sentiment. She was a woman, and she bowed the knee at an altar where
+women love to worship.
+
+"I call it----" Mrs. Bindle stopped short as Alice re-entered the room
+with a small dish of pickled onions, without which Mrs. Hearty would
+have found it impossible to sleep.
+
+With a woman's instinct, Alice realised that Mrs. Bindle disapproved of
+her low-cut, pale blue blouse, and the short skirt that exposed to the
+world's gaze so much of the nether Alice.
+
+"You ain't been lonely, mum?" she queried solicitously, as she took a
+final look round before going to bed, to see that everything was in
+order.
+
+Mrs. Hearty shook her head and undulated violently.
+
+"It's my breath," she panted, and proceeded to hit her chest with the
+flat of her doubled-up fist. "'Ad a nice time?" she managed to gasp in
+the tone of a mistress who knows and understands, and is known and
+understood by, her maid.
+
+"Oh! it was lovely," cried Alice ecstatically. "I went to the pictures
+with"--she hesitated and blushed--"a friend," then, pride getting the
+better of self-consciousness, she added, "a gentleman friend, mum.
+There was a filum about a young girl running away with 'er boy on a
+horse who turned out to be a millionaire and she looked lovely in her
+veil and orange-blossom and 'im that 'andsome."
+
+"And when's it to be, Alice?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, between the assaults
+upon her chest.
+
+"Oh, mum!" giggled Alice, and a moment later she had disappeared round
+the door, with a "Good night, mum, mind you sleeps well."
+
+"I'm surprised the way you let that girl talk to you, Martha," snapped
+Mrs. Bindle, almost before the door had closed behind the retreating
+Alice. "You allow her to be too familiar. If you give them an inch,
+they'll take an ell," she added.
+
+"She's a good gal," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she lifted the glass of
+Guinness to her lips. "It's gone orf," she added a moment later. "It
+ain't wot it used to be," and she shook a despondent head as she
+replaced the almost empty glass upon the table.
+
+"You'd be better without it," was the unsympathetic rejoinder, then, not
+to be diverted from the topic of Alice and her scanty attire, Mrs.
+Bindle added, "Her blouse was disgusting, and as for her skirt, I should
+be ashamed for her to be seen entering my house."
+
+Mrs. Bindle believed in appearances as she believed in "the Lord," and
+it is open to question, if the two had at any time clashed, whether
+appearances would have been sacrificed.
+
+"She's all right," wheezed Mrs. Hearty comfortably, through a mouthful
+of bread-and-cheese.
+
+"The way girls dress now makes me hot all over," snapped Mrs. Bindle.
+"The police ought to stop it."
+
+"They,"--with a gigantic swallow Mrs. Hearty reduced the
+bread-and-cheese to conversational proportions,--"they like it," she
+gasped at length, and broke into ripples and wheezes.
+
+"Don't be disgusting, Martha. You make me ashamed. You ought to speak to
+Alice. It's not respectable, her going about like that."
+
+Mrs. Hearty made an effort to speak; but the words failed to penetrate
+the barrage of bread-and-cheese--Mrs. Hearty did everything with gusto.
+
+"Supposing I was to go out in a short skirt like that. What would you
+say then?"
+
+"You--you ain't got the legs, Lizzie," and Mrs. Hearty was off into a
+paroxysm of gasps and undulations.
+
+"Oh don't, don't," she gasped, as if Mrs. Bindle were responsible for
+her agony. "You'll be the death of me," she cried, as she wiped her eyes
+with a soiled pocket-handkerchief.
+
+To Mrs. Hearty, laughter came as an impulse and an agony. She would
+implore the world at large not to make her laugh, heaving and shaking as
+she protested. She was good-natured, easy-going, and popular with her
+friends, who marvelled at what it was she had seen in the sedate and
+decorous Mr. Hearty to prompt her to marry him.
+
+During her sister's paroxysm, Mrs. Bindle preserved a dignified
+silence. She always deplored Mrs. Hearty's lack of self-control.
+
+"There are the neighbours to consider," she continued at length. Mrs.
+Bindle's thoughts were always with her brother-in-law. "Look how low her
+blouse was."
+
+"It's 'ealthy," puffed Mrs. Hearty, who could always be depended upon to
+find excuses for a black sheep's blackness.
+
+"I call it disgusting." Mrs. Bindle's mouth shut with a snap.
+
+"You----" Mrs. Hearty's reply was stifled in a sudden fit of coughing.
+She heaved and struggled for breath, while her face took on a deep
+purple hue.
+
+Mrs. Bindle rose and proceeded to bestow a series of resounding smacks
+with the flat of her hand upon Mrs. Hearty's ample back. There was a
+heartiness in the blows that savoured of the Old rather than the New
+Testament.
+
+Nearly five minutes elapsed before Mrs. Hearty was sufficiently
+recovered to explain that a crumb had gone the wrong way.
+
+"Serves you right for encouraging that girl in her wickedness," was Mrs.
+Bindle's unsympathetic comment as she returned to her chair. Vaguely she
+saw in her sister's paroxysm, the rebuke of a frowning Providence.
+
+"You wasn't always like wot you are now," complained Mrs. Hearty at
+length.
+
+"I never dressed anything like that girl." There was a note of
+fierceness in Mrs. Bindle's voice, "and I defy you to say I did, Martha
+Hearty, so there."
+
+"Didn't I 'ave to speak to you once about your stockings?" Mrs. Hearty's
+recent attack seemed to have rendered speech easier.
+
+"No wonder you choke," snapped Mrs. Bindle angrily, "saying things like
+that."
+
+"Didn't the boys shout after you 'yaller legs'?" she gasped, determined
+to get the full flavour out of the incident. "They wasn't worn coloured
+then."
+
+"I wonder you aren't afraid of being struck dead," cried Mrs. Bindle
+furiously.
+
+"And you goin' out in muslin and a thin petticoat, and yer legs showin'
+through and the lace on----"
+
+"Don't you dare----" Mrs. Bindle stopped, her utterance strangled. Her
+face was scarlet, and in her eyes was murder. She was conscious that her
+past was a past of vanity; but those were days she had put behind her,
+days when she would spend every penny she could scrape together upon her
+person.
+
+But Mrs. Hearty was oblivious to the storm of anger that her words had
+aroused in her sister's heart. The recollection of the yellow stockings
+and the transparent muslin frock was too much for her, and she was off
+into splutters and wheezes of mirth, among which an occasional "Oh
+don't!" was distinguishable.
+
+"I don't know what's coming to girls, I'm sure," cried Mrs. Bindle at
+length. She had to some extent regained her composure, and was desirous
+of turning the conversation from herself. She lived in fear of her
+sister's frankness; Mrs. Hearty never censored a wardrobe before
+speaking of it.
+
+"They're a lot of brazen hussies," continued Mrs. Bindle, "displaying
+themselves like they do. I can't think why they do it."
+
+"Men!" grunted Mrs. Hearty.
+
+"Don't be disgusting, Martha."
+
+"You always was a fool, Lizzie," said Mrs. Hearty good-humouredly.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was determined not to allow the subject of Alice's
+indelicate display of her person to escape her. She had merely been
+waiting her opportunity to return to the charge.
+
+"You should think of Mr. Hearty," she said unctuously; "he's got a
+position to keep up, and people will talk, seeing that girl going out
+like that."
+
+At this, Mrs. Hearty once more became helpless with suppressed laughter.
+Her manifold chins vibrated, tears streamed down her cheeks, and she
+wheezed and gasped and struck her chest, fierce, resounding blows.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she gasped at length. "You'll be the death of me, Lizzie,"
+and then another wave of laughter assailed her, and she was off again.
+
+Presently, as the result of an obvious effort, she spluttered, "'E likes
+it, too," she ended in a little scream of laughter. "You watch him. Oh,
+oh, I shall die!" she gasped.
+
+"Martha, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she cried angrily.
+"You're as bad as Bindle."
+
+For fully a minute, Mrs. Hearty rocked and heaved, as she strove to
+find utterance for something that seemed to be stifling her.
+
+"You don't know Alf!" she gasped at length, as she mopped her face with
+the dingy pocket-handkerchief. "Alice gives notice," she managed to
+gasp. "Alf tries to kiss----" and speech once more forsook her.
+
+The look in Mrs. Bindle's eyes was that she usually kept for
+blasphemers. Mr. Hearty was the god of her idolatry, impeccable, austere
+and unimpeachable. The mere suggestion that he should behave in a way
+she would not expect even Bindle to behave, filled her with loathing,
+and she determined that her sister would eventually share the fate of
+Sapphira.
+
+"Martha, you're a disgrace," she cried, rising. "You might at least have
+the decency not to drag Mr. Hearty's name into your unclean
+conversation. I think you owe him an apology for----"
+
+At that moment the door opened, and Mr. Hearty entered.
+
+"Didn't you, Alf?" demanded Mrs. Hearty.
+
+"Didn't I what, Martha?" asked Mr. Hearty in a thin, woolly voice. "Good
+evening, Elizabeth," he added, turning to Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Didn't you try to kiss Alice, and she slapped your face?" Mrs. Hearty
+once more proceeded to mop her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. The
+comedy was good; but it was painful.
+
+For one fleeting moment Mr. Hearty was unmasked. His whole expression
+underwent a change. There was fear in his eyes. He looked about him like
+a hunted animal seeking escape. Then, by a great effort, he seemed to
+re-assert control over himself.
+
+"I--I've forgotten to post a letter," he muttered, and a second later
+the door closed behind him.
+
+"'E's always like that when I remind him," cried Mrs. Hearty, "always
+forgotten to post a letter."
+
+"Martha," said Mrs. Bindle solemnly, as she resumed her seat, "you're a
+wicked woman, and to-night I shall ask God to forgive you."
+
+"Make it Alf instead," cried Mrs. Hearty.
+
+Five minutes later, Mr. Hearty re-entered the parlour, looking furtively
+from his wife to Mrs. Bindle. He was a spare man of medium height, with
+an iron-grey moustache and what Bindle described as "'alleluia
+whiskers"; but which the world knows as mutton-chops. He was a man to
+whom all violence, be it physical or verbal, was distasteful. He
+preferred diplomacy to the sword.
+
+"Oo's got it, Alf?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, suddenly remembering the
+chapel choir and her husband's aspirations.
+
+"Mr. Coplestone." The natural woolliness of Mr. Hearty's voice was
+emphasised by the dejection of disappointment; but his eyes told of the
+relief he felt that Alice was no longer to be the topic of conversation.
+
+"It's a shame, Mr. Hearty, that it is."
+
+Mrs. Bindle folded her hands in her lap and drew in her chin, with the
+air of one who scents a great injustice. The injustice of the
+appointment quite blotted-out from her mind all thought of Alice.
+
+"You got quite enough to do, Alf," wheezed Mrs. Hearty as, after many
+ineffectual bounces, she struggled to her feet, and stood swaying
+slightly as she beat her breast reproachfully.
+
+"I could have found time," said Mr. Hearty, as he picked nervously at
+the quicks of his finger-nails.
+
+"Of course you could," agreed Mrs. Bindle, looking up at her sister
+disapprovingly.
+
+"I've never once missed a choir-practice," he continued, with the air of
+a man who is advancing a definite claim.
+
+"Trust you," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she rolled towards the door. "It's
+them gals," she added. "Good-night, Lizzie. Don't be long, Alf. You
+always wake me getting into bed," and, with a final wheeze, she passed
+out of the room.
+
+Mr. Hearty coughed nervously behind his hand; whilst Mrs. Bindle drew in
+her lips and chin still further. The indelicacy of Mrs. Hearty's remark
+embarrassed them both.
+
+It had always been Mr. Hearty's wish to train the choir at the Alton
+Road Chapel, and when Mr. Smithers had resigned, owing to chronic
+bronchitis and the approach of winter, Mr. Hearty felt that the time had
+come when yet another of his ambitions was to be realised. There had
+proved, however, to be another Richmond in the field, in the shape of
+Mr. Coplestone, who kept an oil-shop in the New King's Road.
+
+By some means unknown to Mr. Hearty, his rival had managed to invest the
+interest of the minister and several of the deacons, with the result
+that Mr. Hearty had come out a very bad second.
+
+Now, in the hour of defeat, he yearned for sympathy, and there was only
+one to whom he could turn, his sister-in-law, who shared so many of his
+earthly views and heavenly hopes. Would his sister-in-law believe----
+
+"I call it a shame," she said for the second time, as Mr. Hearty drew a
+deep sigh of relief. In spite of herself, Mrs. Bindle was irritated at
+the way in which he picked at the quicks of his finger-nails, "and you
+so musical, too," she added.
+
+"I have always been interested in music," said Mr. Hearty, with the air
+of one who knows that he is receiving nothing but his due. Alice and her
+alluring clothing were forgotten. "I had learned the Tonic Sol-fa
+notation by heart before I was twenty," he added.
+
+"You would have done so much to improve the singing." Mrs. Bindle was
+intent only on applying balm to her hero's wounds. She too had forgotten
+Alice and all her ways.
+
+"It isn't what it might be," he remarked. "It has been very indifferent
+lately. Several have noticed it. Last Sunday, they nearly broke down in
+'The Half Was Never Told.'"
+
+Mrs. Bindle nodded.
+
+"They always find it difficult to get high 'f'," he continued. "I should
+have made a point of cultivating their upper registers," he added, with
+the melancholy retrospection of a man who, after a fire, states that it
+had been his intention to insure on the morrow.
+
+"Perhaps----" began Mrs. Bindle, then she stopped. It seemed unchristian
+to say that perhaps Mr. Coplestone would have to relinquish his newly
+acquired honour.
+
+"I should also have tried to have the American organ tuned, I don't
+think the bellows is very sound, either."
+
+For some minutes there was silence. Mr. Hearty was preoccupied with the
+quicks of his finger-nails. He had just succeeded in drawing blood, and
+he glanced covertly at Mrs. Bindle to see if she had noticed it.
+
+"Er----" he paused. He had been seeking an opportunity of clearing his
+character with his sister-in-law. Suddenly inspiration gripped him.
+
+"I--we----" he paused. "I'm afraid Martha will have to get rid of
+Alice."
+
+"And about time, with clothes like she wears," was Mrs. Bindle's
+uncompromising comment.
+
+"And she tells--she's most untruthful," he continued eagerly; he was
+smarting under the recollection that Alice had on one occasion pushed
+aside the half-crown he had tendered, and it had required a ten shilling
+note to remove from her memory the thought of her "friend" with whom she
+had threatened him.
+
+"I've been speaking about her to Martha this evening." The line of Mrs.
+Bindle's lips was still grim.
+
+"I'm afraid she's a bad--not a good girl," amended Mr. Hearty. "I----"
+
+"You don't push yourself forward enough," said Mrs. Bindle, her thoughts
+still on Mr. Coplestone's victory. "Look at Bindle. He knows a lord,
+and look what he is." She precipitated into the last two words all the
+venom of years of disappointment. "And you've got three shops," she
+added inconsequently.
+
+"I--I never had time to go out and about," stuttered Mr. Hearty, as if
+that explained the fact of his not possessing a lord among his
+acquaintance. His thoughts were still preoccupied with the Alice
+episode.
+
+"You ought to, Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle with conviction. "You owe
+it to yourself and to what you've done."
+
+"You see, Joseph is different," said Mr. Hearty, pursuing his own line
+of thought. "He----"
+
+"Talks too much," said Mrs. Bindle with decision, filling in the blank
+inaccurately. "I tell him his fine friends only laugh up their sleeves
+at him. They should see him in his own home," she added.
+
+For some moments there was silence, during which Mrs. Bindle sat,
+immobile as an Assyrian goddess, her eyes smouldering balefully.
+
+"I should have liked to have trained the choir," he said, his mind
+returning to the cause of his disappointment.
+
+"It's that Mr. Coplestone," said Mrs. Bindle with conviction. "I never
+liked him, with his foxy little ways. I never deal with him."
+
+"I have always done what I could for the chapel, too," continued Mr.
+Hearty, not to be diverted from his main theme by reference to Mr.
+Coplestone's shortcomings.
+
+"You've done too much, Mr. Hearty, that's what's the matter," she cried
+with conviction, loyalty to her brother-in-law triumphing over all sense
+of Christian charity. "It's always the same. Look at Bindle," she added,
+unable to forget entirely her own domestic cross. "Think what I've done
+for him, and look at him."
+
+"Last year I let them have all the fruit at cost price for the
+choir-outing," said Mr. Hearty; "but I'll never do it again," he added,
+the man in him triumphing over the martyr, "and I picked it all out
+myself."
+
+"The more you do, the more you may do," said Mrs. Bindle oracularly.
+
+Mr. Hearty's reference was to a custom prevailing among the worshippers
+at the Alton Road Chapel. It was an understood thing that, in placing
+orders, preference should always be given to members of the flock, who,
+on their part, undertook to supply their respective commodities at cost
+price. The object of this was to bring all festivities "within reach of
+our poorer brethren," as Mr. Sopley, a one-time minister, had expressed
+it when advocating the principle.
+
+The result was hours of heart-searching for those entrusted with the
+feeding of the Faithful. Mr. Hearty, for instance, spent much time and
+thought in wrestling with figures and his conscience. He argued that
+"cost price" must allow for rent, rates and taxes; salaries, a knowledge
+of the cheapest markets (which he possessed) and interest on capital
+(his own).
+
+By a curious coincidence, the actual figures came out very little above
+the ordinary retail price he was charging in his shops, which proved to
+him conclusively that he was in no sense of the term a profiteer. As a
+matter of fact, it showed that he was under-charging.
+
+Other members of the chapel seemed to arrive at practically the same
+result as Mr. Hearty, and by similar means.
+
+As the "poorer brethren" had no voice in the fixing of these prices, and
+as everyone was too interested in his own figures to think of
+criticising those of others, the "poorer brethren" either paid, or
+stayed away.
+
+"You ought to join the choir, Elizabeth." It was Mr. Hearty's
+thank-offering for sympathy.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hearty!" she simpered. "I'm sure I couldn't sing well enough."
+
+"You sing very nicely, Elizabeth. I have noticed it on Sunday evenings
+when you come round. You have a very good high soprano."
+
+A quiver passed through Mrs. Bindle. She drew herself up, and her lips
+seemed to take on a softer line.
+
+"I'm sure it's very good of you to say so," she responded gratefully.
+
+"I shall still sing in the choir," said Mr. Hearty; "but----"
+
+A heavy pounding overhead caused him to start violently. It was Mrs.
+Hearty's curfew.
+
+Mrs. Bindle rose and Mr. Hearty accompanied her to the street-door.
+Alice was in the passage, apparently on her way to bed.
+
+"Good night, Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Good night, Elizabeth," and Mr. Hearty closed the door behind her.
+
+She paused to open her umbrella, it was spotting with rain and Mrs.
+Bindle was careful of her clothes.
+
+Suddenly through the open transom she heard a surprised scream and the
+sound of scuffling.
+
+"You beast," cried a feminine voice. "I'll tell missis, that I will."
+
+And Mrs. Bindle turned and ran full-tilt into a policeman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME
+
+
+I
+
+"Gospel bells, gospel bells, hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm."
+
+Mrs. Bindle accompanied her favourite hymn with bangs from the flat-iron
+as she strove to coax one of Bindle's shirts to smoothness.
+
+She invariably worked to the tune of "Gospel Bells." Of the hymn itself
+she possessed two words, "gospel" and "bells"; but the tune was hers to
+the most insignificant semi-quaver, and an unlimited supply of "hms" did
+the rest.
+
+Turning the shirt at the word "gospel," she brought the iron down full
+in the middle of what, judging from the power she put into the stroke,
+might have been Bindle's back.
+
+"Bells," she sang with emphasis, and proceeded to trail off into the
+"hms."
+
+With Mrs. Bindle, singing reflected her mood. When indignation or anger
+gripped her soul, "Gospel Bells" was rendered with a vigour that
+penetrated to Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney.
+
+Then, as her mood mellowed, so would the tune soften, almost dying away
+until, possibly, a stray thought of Bindle brought about a crescendo
+passage, capable of being developed into full forte, brass-wind and
+tympani.
+
+After one of these full-throated passages, the thought of her
+brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, mellowed the stream of melody passing
+through her thin, slightly parted lips.
+
+It had reached an almost caressing softness, when a knock at the door
+caused her to stop suddenly. A moment later, the iron was banged upon
+the rest, and she glanced down at her apron. To use her own phrase, she
+was the "pink of neatness."
+
+Walking across the kitchen and along the short passage, she threw open
+the door with the air of one who was prepared to defend the sacred
+domestic hearth against all comers.
+
+"I've come about the 'ouse, mum." A mild-looking little man with a dirty
+collar and a deprecating manner stood before her, sucking nervously at a
+hollow tooth, the squeak of which his friends had learned to live down.
+
+"The house!" repeated Mrs. Bindle aggressively. "What house?"
+
+"This 'ouse wot's to let, mum." The little man struggled to extract a
+newspaper from his pocket. "I'd like to take it," he added.
+
+"Oh! you would, would you?" Mrs. Bindle eyed him with disfavour. "Well,
+it's not to let," and with that she banged the door in the little man's
+face, just as his pocket gave up the struggle and released a soiled
+copy of _The Fulham Signal_.
+
+He started back, the paper falling upon the tiled-path that led from the
+gate to the front-door.
+
+For nearly a minute he stood staring at the door, as if not quite
+realising what had happened. Then, picking up the paper, he gazed at it
+with a puzzled expression, turned to a marked passage under the heading
+"Houses to Let," and read:
+
+     HOUSE TO LET.--Four-roomed house to let in Fulham. Easy access to
+     bus, tram and train. Rent 15/6 a week. Immediate possession. Apply
+     to occupier, 7 Fenton Street, Fulham, S.W.
+
+He looked at the number on the door, back again at the paper, then once
+more at the number. Apparently satisfied that there was no mistake, he
+knocked again, a feeble, half-hearted knock that testified to the
+tremors within him.
+
+He had been graded C3; but he possessed a wife who was, physically, A1.
+It was the knowledge that she would demand an explanation if he failed
+to secure the house, after which she had sent him hot-foot, that
+inspired him with sufficient courage to make a second attempt to
+interview Mrs. Bindle.
+
+With inward tremblings, he waited for the door to open again. As he
+stood, hoping against hope in his coward heart that the summons had not
+been heard, a big, heavily-hipped woman, in a dirty black-and-white
+foulard blouse, a draggled green skirt, and shapeless stays, slid
+through the gate and waddled up the path.
+
+"So you got 'ere fust," she gasped, her flushed face showing that she
+had been hurrying. "Well, well, it can't be 'elped, I suppose, fust come
+fust served. I always says it and always shall."
+
+The little man had swung round, and now stood blinking up at the new
+arrival, who entirely blocked his line of retreat.
+
+"Knocked, 'ave you?" she enquired, fanning her flushed face with a
+folded newspaper.
+
+He nodded; but his gaze was directed over her heaving shoulder at a man
+and woman, with a little girl between them, approaching from the
+opposite side of the way.
+
+As the new arrivals entered the garden, the stout woman explained that
+"this gentleman" had already knocked.
+
+"P'raps they ain't up yet," suggested the man with the little girl.
+
+"Well, they ought to be," said the stout woman with conviction.
+
+Another woman now joined the throng, her turned-up sleeves and the man's
+tweed cap on her head, kept in place by a long, amber-headed hat-pin,
+testifying to the limited time she had bestowed upon her toilette.
+
+"Is it took?" she demanded of the woman with the little girl.
+
+"Dunno!" was the reply. "She ain't opened the door yet."
+
+"She opened it once," said the little man.
+
+"Wot she say?"
+
+"Said it wasn't to let, then banged it to in my face," was the injured
+response.
+
+"'Ere, let me 'ave a try," cried the woman in the foulard blouse, as she
+grasped the knocker and proceeded to awaken the echoes of Fenton Street.
+Corple Street at one end and Bransdon Road at the other, were included
+in the sound-waves that emanated from the Bindles' knocker.
+
+Several neighbours, including Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney, came to their
+doors and gazed at the collection of people that now entirely blocked
+the pathway of No. 7. Three other women had joined the throng, together
+with a rag-and-bone man in dilapidated clothing, accompanied by a donkey
+and cart.
+
+"A shame I calls it, a-keepin' folks 'angin' about like this," said one
+of the new arrivals.
+
+"P'raps it's let," said the rag-and-bone man.
+
+"Well, why don't they say so?" snapped she with the tweed cap and
+hat-pin.
+
+"'Ave another go, missis," suggested the man with the little girl. "I'm
+losin' 'alf a day over this."
+
+Inspired by this advice, the big woman reached forward to seize the
+knocker. At that moment the door was wrenched open, and Mrs. Bindle
+appeared. She had removed her apron and brushed her thin, sandy hair,
+which was drawn back from her sharp, hatchet-like face so that not a
+hair wantoned from the restraining influence of the knot behind.
+
+Grim, with indrawn lips and the light of battle in her eyes she glared,
+first at the little man with whom she had already held parley, then at
+the woman in the foulard blouse.
+
+At chapel, there was no more meek and docile "Daughter of the Lord" than
+Mrs. Bindle. To her, religion was an ever-ready help and sustenance; but
+there was something in her life that bulked even larger than her Faith,
+although she would have been the first to deny it. That thing was her
+Home.
+
+In keeping the domestic temple of her hearth as she conceived it should
+be kept, Mrs. Bindle toiled ceaselessly. It was her fetish. She
+worshipped at chapel as a stepping-stone to post-mortem glory; but her
+home was the real altar at which she sacrificed.
+
+As she gazed at the "rabble," as she mentally characterised it,
+littering the tiled-path of the front garden, which only that morning
+she had cleaned, the rage of David entered her heart; but she was a
+God-fearing woman who disliked violence--until it was absolutely
+necessary.
+
+"Was it you knocking?" she demanded of the big woman in the foulard
+blouse. Her voice was sharp as the edge of a razor; but restrained.
+
+"That's right, my dear," replied the woman comfortably, "I come about
+the 'ouse."
+
+"Oh! you have, have you?" cried Mrs. Bindle. "And are these your
+friends?" Her eyes for a moment left those of her antagonist and took in
+the queue which, by now, overflowed the path into the roadway.
+
+"Look 'ere, I'll give you sixteen bob a week," broke in the woman with
+the tweed cap and the hat-pin, instantly rendering herself an Ishmael.
+
+"'Ere, none o' that!" cried an angry female voice. "Fair do's."
+
+There was a murmur of approval from the others, which was interrupted by
+Mrs. Bindle's clear-cut, incisive voice.
+
+"Get out of my garden, and be off, the lot of you," she cried, taking a
+half-step in the direction of the big woman, to whom she addressed
+herself.
+
+"Is it let?" enquired the rag-and-bone man from the rear.
+
+"Is what let?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"The 'ouse, mum," said the rag-and-bone man, whose profession demanded
+tact and politeness.
+
+"This house is not to let," was the angry retort, "never was to let, and
+never will be to let till I'm gone. Now you just be off with you,
+or----" she paused.
+
+"Or wot?" demanded she of the tweed cap and hat-pin, desirous of
+rehabilitating herself with the others.
+
+"I'll send for a policeman," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder. She still
+restrained her natural instincts in a vice-like self-control. Her hands
+shook slightly; but not with fear. It was the trembling of the tigress
+preparing to spring.
+
+"Then wot about this advert?" cried the man with the little girl,
+extending the newspaper towards her.
+
+"Yes, wot about it?" demanded the woman in the foulard blouse, extending
+her paper in turn.
+
+"There's no advertisement about this house," said Mrs. Bindle, ignoring
+the papers, "and you'd better go away. Pity you haven't got something
+better to do than to come disturbin' me in the midst of my ironin'," and
+with that she banged the door and disappeared.
+
+A murmur of anger passed along the queue, anger which portended trouble.
+
+"Nice way to treat people," said a little woman with a dirty face, a
+dingy black bonnet and a velvet dolman, to which portions of the
+original jet-trimming still despairingly adhered. "Some folks don't seem
+to know 'ow to be'ave."
+
+There was another murmur of agreement.
+
+"Kick the blinkin' door in," suggested a pacifist.
+
+"I'd like to get at 'er with my nails," said a sharp-faced woman with a
+baby in her arms. "I know '_er_ sort."
+
+"Deserves to 'ave 'er stutterin' windows smashed, the stuck-up baggage!"
+cried another.
+
+"'Ullo, look at all them people."
+
+A big, puffy man with a person that rendered his boots invisible, guided
+the hand-cart he was pushing into the kerb in front of No. 7 Fenton
+Street. A pale, dispirited lad was harnessed to the vehicle by a
+dilapidated piece of much-knotted rope strung across his narrow chest.
+As the barrow came to a standstill, he allowed the rope to drop to the
+ground and, stepping out of the harness, he turned an apathetic and
+unspeculative eye towards the crowd.
+
+The big man, whose clothing consisted of a shirt, a pair of trousers
+and some braces, stood looking at the applicants for the altar of Mrs.
+Bindle's life. The crowd returned the stare with interest. The furniture
+piled upon the barrow caused them some anxiety. Was that the explanation
+of the unfriendly reception accorded them?
+
+"Now then, Charley, when you've done a-drinkin' in this bloomin'
+beauty-show, you can give me a 'and."
+
+"'Oo are you calling a beauty-show?" demanded the woman in the dolman.
+"You ain't got much to talk about, with a stummick like yours."
+
+"My mistake, missis," said the big man imperturbably. "Sorry I made you
+cry." Then, turning to Charley, he added: "If you 'adn't such a thick
+'ead, Charley, you'd know it was a sugar queue. They're wearin' too much
+for a beauty-show. Now, then, over the top, my lad." He indicated the
+railings with a nod, the gateway was blocked.
+
+With the leisurely movements of a fatalist, Charley moved his
+inconspicuous person towards the railings of No. 7, while the big man
+proceeded to untie the rope that bound a miscellaneous collection of
+household goods to the hand-cart, an operation which entirely absorbed
+the attention of the queue.
+
+"You took it?" interrogated the rag-and-bone man.
+
+"Don't you worry, cocky," said the big man as he lifted from the barrow
+a cane-bottomed chair, through which somebody had evidently sat, and
+placed it on the pavement. "Once inside the garding and the 'ouse is
+mine. 'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he admonished the lad, who was
+standing by the kerb as if reluctant to trespass.
+
+With unexpressive face, the boy turned and climbed the railings.
+
+"Catch 'old," cried the man, thrusting into Charley's unwilling hands a
+dilapidated saucepan.
+
+The boy tossed it on to the small flower-bed in the centre of the
+garden, where Mrs. Bindle was endeavouring to cultivate geraniums from
+slips supplied by a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel. These
+geranium slips were the stars in the grey firmament of her life. She
+tended them assiduously, and always kept a jug of water just inside the
+parlour-window with which to discourage investigating cats. It was she
+too that had planted the lobelia-border.
+
+The queue seemed hypnotised by the overwhelming personality of the big
+man. With the fatalism of despair they decided that the gods were
+against them, and that he really had achieved the success he claimed.
+They still lingered, as if instinct told them that dramatic moments were
+pending.
+
+"I don't doubt but wot I'll be very comfortable," remarked the big man
+contentedly. "'Ere, catch 'old, Charley," he cried, tossing the lad a
+colander, possessed of more holes than the manufacturer had ever dreamed
+of.
+
+Charley turned too late, and the colander caught a geranium which, alone
+among its fellows, had shown a half-hearted tendency to bloom. That
+particular flower was Mrs. Bindle's ewe-lamb.
+
+"Ain't 'e a knock-out?" cried the big man, pausing for a moment to gaze
+at his offspring. "Don't take after 'is pa, and that's a fact," and he
+exposed three or four dark-brown stumps of teeth.
+
+"P'raps you ain't 'is father," giggled a feminine voice at the end of
+the queue.
+
+The big man turned in the direction from which the voice had come,
+stared stolidly at an inoffensive little man, who had "not guilty"
+written all over him, then, deliberately swinging round, he lifted a
+small wicker clothes-basket from the cart.
+
+"'Ere, catch it, Charley," he cried, and without waiting to assure
+himself of Charley's willingness or ability to do so, he pitched it over
+the railings.
+
+Charley turned just in time to see the basket coming. He endeavoured to
+avoid it, tripped over the colander, and sat down in the centre of the
+geranium-bed, carrying riot and desolation with him.
+
+"Ain't you a----" but Charley was never to know how he appeared to his
+father at that moment.
+
+Observing that several heads were turned towards the front door, the
+eyes of the big man had instinctively followed their direction. It was
+what he saw there that had caused him to pause in describing his
+offspring.
+
+Standing very still, her face deathly pale, with no sign of her lips
+beyond a thin, grey line, stood Mrs. Bindle, her eyes fixed upon the
+geranium-bed and the desolation reigning there. Her breath came in short
+jerks.
+
+With an activity of which his previous movements had given no
+indication, Charley climbed the railings to the comparative safety of
+the street.
+
+Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon the big man.
+
+"'Ere, come along, let me get in," he cried, pushing his way through the
+crowd, which showed no inclination for resistance. The little man who
+had first arrived was already well outside, talking to the woman with
+the tweed cap and hat-pin, while she of the foulard blouse was edging
+down the path towards the gate. None showed the least desire to protest
+against the big man's claim to the house by right of conquest--and he
+passed on to his Waterloo.
+
+"I taken this 'ouse," he cried, as he approached the grim figure on the
+doorstep. "Fifteen an' a kick a week, an' cheap at 'alf the price," he
+added jovially.
+
+"'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he called out over his shoulder.
+
+Charley, however, stood gazing at his parent with a greater show of
+interest than he had hitherto manifested. He seemed instinctively to
+grasp the dramatic possibilities of the situation.
+
+"Thought I'd bring the sticks wiv me, missis," said the man genially.
+"Nothink like makin' sure in these days." He stopped suddenly. Without a
+word, Mrs. Bindle had turned and disappeared into the house.
+
+"May as well pay a deposit," he remarked, thrusting a dirty hand into
+his trouser pocket. He glanced over his shoulder and winked jocosely at
+the woman with the foulard blouse.
+
+The next thing he knew was that Drama with a capital "D" had taken a
+hand in the game. The crowd drew its breath with almost a sob of
+surprised expectancy.
+
+Into Charley's vacant eyes there came a look of interest, and into the
+big man's mouth, just as he turned his head, there came a something that
+was wet and tasted odiously of carbolic.
+
+He staggered back, his eyes bulging, as Mrs. Bindle, armed with a large
+mop, which she had taken the precaution to wet, stood regarding him like
+an avenging fury. Her eyes blazed, and her nostrils were distended like
+those of a frightened thoroughbred.
+
+Before the big man had time to splutter his protests, she had swung
+round the mop and brought the handle down with a crack upon his bare,
+bald head. Then, once more swinging round to the business end of the
+mop, she drew back a step and charged.
+
+The mop got the big man just beneath the chin. For a moment he stood on
+one leg, his arms extended, like the figure of Mercury on the Piccadilly
+Circus fountain.
+
+Mrs. Bindle gave another thrust to the mop, and down he went with a
+thud, his head coming with a sharp crack against the tiles of the path.
+
+The crowd murmured its delight. Charley danced from one foot to the
+other, the expression on his face proving conclusively that the vacuous
+look with which he had arrived was merely a mask assumed for defensive
+purposes.
+
+"Get up!"
+
+Into these two words Mrs. Bindle precipitated an amount of feeling that
+thrilled the crowd. The big man, however, lay prone, his eyes fixed in
+fear upon the end of the mop.
+
+"Get up!" repeated Mrs. Bindle. "I'll teach you to come disturbing a
+respectable home. Look at my garden."
+
+As he still made no attempt to move, she turned suddenly and doubled
+along the passage, reappearing a moment later with a pail of water with
+which she had been washing out the scullery. Without a moment's
+hesitation she emptied the contents over the recumbent figure of the big
+man. The house-cloth fell across his eyes, like a bandage, and the
+hearthstone took him full on the nose.
+
+"Oo-er!"
+
+That one act of Mrs. Bindle's had saved from entire annihilation the
+faith of a child. For the first time in his existence, Charley realised
+that there was a God of retribution.
+
+Murmurs of approval came from the crowd.
+
+"Give it to 'im, missis, 'e done it," shouted one. "It warn't the kid's
+fault, blinkin' 'Un."
+
+"Dirty profiteer," cried the thin woman. "Look at 'is stummick," she
+added as if in support of her words.
+
+"Get up!" Again Mrs. Bindle's hard, uninflected words sounded like the
+accents of destiny.
+
+She accompanied her exhortation by a jab from the mop-end of her weapon
+directed at the centre of that portion of the big man's anatomy which
+had been advanced as proof of his profiteering propensities.
+
+He raised himself a few inches; but Mrs. Bindle, with all the
+inconsistency of a woman, dashed the mop once more in his face, and down
+went his head again with a crack.
+
+"Charley!" he roared; but there was nothing of the Paladin about
+Charley. Between him and his father at that moment were eleven years of
+heavy-handed tyranny, and Charley remained on the safety-side of the
+railings.
+
+"Get up! You great, hulkin' brute," cried Mrs. Bindle, reversing the mop
+and getting in a stroke at his solar-plexus which would have made her
+fame in pig-sticking.
+
+"Grrrrumph!" The fat man's exclamation was involuntary.
+
+"Get up, I tell you," she reiterated. "You fat, ugly son of Satan, you
+Beelzebub, you leper, you Judas, you----" she paused a moment in her
+search for the undesirables from Holy Writ. Then, with inspiration, she
+added--"Barabbas."
+
+The man made another effort to rise; but Mrs. Bindle brought the end of
+the mop down upon his head with a crack that sounded like a pistol-shot.
+
+The expression on Charley's face changed. The lower jaw lifted. The
+loose, vacuous mouth spread. Charley was grinning.
+
+For a moment the man lay still. Mrs. Bindle was standing over him with
+the mop, a tense and righteously indignant St. George over a
+particularly evil dragon.
+
+Suddenly he gave tongue.
+
+"'Elp!" he yelled. "I'm bein' murdered. 'Elp! Charley, where are you?"
+But Charley's grin had expanded and he was actually rubbing his hands
+with enjoyment.
+
+Mrs. Bindle brought the mop down on the man's mouth. "Stop it, you
+blaspheming son o' Belial," she cried.
+
+The big man roared the louder; but he made no effort to rise.
+
+"'Ere comes a flatty," cried a voice.
+
+"Slop's a-comin'," echoed another, and a minute later, a clean-shaven
+embodiment of youthful dignity and self-possession, in a helmet and blue
+uniform, approached and began to make his way through the crowd towards
+the Bindles' gate.
+
+From the position in which he lay the big man, unable to see that
+assistance was at hand, continued to roar for help.
+
+At the approach of this symbol of the law, Mrs. Bindle stepped back and
+brought her mop to the stand-at-ease position.
+
+The policeman looked from one to the other, and then proceeded to ferret
+somewhere in the tails of his tunic, whence he produced a notebook. This
+was obviously a case requiring literary expression.
+
+The big man, seeing Mrs. Bindle fall back, turned his head and caught a
+glimpse of the policeman. Very cautiously he raised himself to a sitting
+posture.
+
+"She's been murderin' me," he said, with one eye fixed warily upon the
+mop. "'Ere, Charley!" he cried, looking over his left shoulder.
+
+Charley reluctantly approached, regretful that law and order had
+triumphed over red revolution.
+
+"Ain't she been tryin' to kill me?" demanded the big man of his
+offspring.
+
+"Biffed 'im on the 'ead wiv the 'andle," corroborated the boy in a
+toneless voice.
+
+"Poured water over me and 'it me in the stummick too, didn't she,
+Charley?" Once more the big man turned to his son for corroboration.
+
+"Got 'im a rare 'un too!" agreed Charley, with a feeling in his voice
+that caused his father to look at him sharply. "Sloshed 'im on the jaw
+too," he added, as if finding pleasure in dwelling upon the sufferings
+of his parent.
+
+"Do you wish to charge her?" asked the policeman in an official voice.
+
+"'Charge me!'" broke in Mrs. Bindle. "'Charge me!' I should like to see
+'im do it. See what 'e's done to my geraniums, bringing his filthy
+sticks into my front garden. 'Charge me!'" she repeated. "Just let him
+try it!" and she brought the mop to a position from which it could be
+launched at the big man's head.
+
+Instinctively he sank down again on to the path, and the policeman
+interposed his body between the weapon and the vanquished.
+
+"There's plenty of witnesses here to prove what he done," cried Mrs.
+Bindle shrilly.
+
+Once more the big man raised himself to a sitting posture; but Mrs.
+Bindle had no intention of allowing him to control the situation. To her
+a policeman meant justice, and to this self-possessed lad in the uniform
+of unlimited authority she opened her heart and, at the same time, the
+vials of her wrath.
+
+"'Ere was I ironin' in my kitchen when this rabble," she indicated the
+crowd with the handle of the mop, "descended upon me like the plague of
+locusts." To Mrs. Bindle, scriptural allusion was a necessity.
+
+"They said they wanted to take my 'ouse. Said I'd told them it was to
+let, the perjured scum of Judas. Then _he_ came along"--she pointed to
+her victim who was gingerly feeling the bump that Mrs. Bindle's mop had
+raised--"and threw all that dirty lumber into my garden, and--and----"
+Here her voice broke, for to Mrs. Bindle those geranium slips were very
+dear.
+
+"You'd better get up."
+
+At the policeman's words the big man rose heavily to his feet. For a
+moment he stood still, as if to make quite sure that no bones were
+broken. Then his hand went to his neck-cloth and he produced a piece of
+hearthstone which had, apparently, become detached from the parent slab.
+
+"Threw bricks at me," he complained, holding out the piece of
+hearthstone to the policeman.
+
+"Ananias!" came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising retort.
+
+"Do you want to charge her?" asked the policeman brusquely.
+
+"Serves 'im jolly well right," cried the woman with the tweed cap and
+hat-pin, pushing her way in front of a big man who obstructed her view.
+
+"Oughter be run-in 'isself," agreed a pallid woman with a shawl over her
+head.
+
+"Look wot 'e done to 'er garding," mumbled the rag-and-bone man,
+pointing at the flower-bed with the air of one who has just made an
+important discovery.
+
+"It's the likes of 'im wot makes strikes," commented the woman in the
+dolman. "Blinkin' profiteer."
+
+"She's got pluck, any'ow," said a telephone mechanic, who had joined the
+crowd just before Charley's father had bent before the wind of Mrs.
+Bindle's displeasure. "Knocked 'im out in the first round. Regular
+George Carpenter," he added.
+
+"You get them things out of my garden. If you don't I'll give you in
+charge."
+
+The big man blinked, a puzzled expression creeping into his eyes. He
+looked at the policeman uncomprehendingly. This was an aspect of the
+case that had not, hitherto, struck him.
+
+"Are they your things?" asked the policeman, intent upon disentangling
+the situation before proceeding to use the pencil, the point of which he
+was meditatively sucking.
+
+Charley's father nodded. He was still thinking over Mrs. Bindle's
+remark. It seemed to open up disconcerting possibilities.
+
+"Now then, what are you going to do?" demanded the policeman sternly.
+"Do you wish to make a charge?"
+
+"I will," said Mrs. Bindle, "unless 'e takes 'is furniture away and pays
+for the damage to my flowers. I'll charge 'im, the great, 'ulking brute,
+attacking a defenceless woman because he knows 'er 'usband's out."
+
+"That's right, missis, you 'ave 'im quodded," called out the
+rag-and-bone man. "'E didn't ought to 'ave done that to your garding."
+
+"Tryin' to swank us 'e'd taken the 'ouse," cried the woman with the
+tweed cap and hat-pin. "I see through 'im from the first, I did. There
+ain't many men wot can throw dust in my eyes," she added, looking
+eagerly round for a dissenting look.
+
+"'Ullo, 'ullo!" cried a voice from the outskirts of the crowd. "Somebody
+givin' somethink away, or is it a fire? 'Ere, let me pass, I'm the cove
+wot pays the rent," and Bindle pushed his genial way through the crowd.
+
+They made way without protest. The advent of the newcomer suggested
+further dramatic developments, possibly even a fight.
+
+"'Ullo, Tichborne!" cried Bindle, catching sight of the big man. "Been
+scrappin'?"
+
+The three protagonists in the drama turned, as if with relief, to face
+this new phase of the situation.
+
+"'Oo's 'e?" enquired Bindle of the policeman, indicating the big man
+with a jerk of his thumb.
+
+"He's been tryin' to murder me, and if you were a man, Joe Bindle, you'd
+kill 'im."
+
+Bindle subjected the big man to an elaborate scrutiny. "Looks to me," he
+remarked drily, "as if someone's got in before me. Wot's 'appened?" He
+looked interrogatingly up at the policeman.
+
+"'Oly 'Orace," he cried suddenly, as he caught sight of the
+miscellaneous collection of furniture that lay about the geranium bed.
+"What's that little pawnshop a-doin' on our front garden?"
+
+With the aid of the rag-and-bone man and the woman with the tweed cap
+and hat-pin, the whole situation was explained and expounded to both
+Bindle and the policeman.
+
+When he had heard everything, Bindle turned to the big man, who stood
+sulkily awaiting events.
+
+"Now, look 'ere, cully," he said. "You didn't oughter start doin' them
+sort o' things with a figure like yours. When Mrs. B. gets 'old of a
+broom, or a mop, the safest thing to do is to draw in your solar-plexus
+an' run. It 'urts less. Now, speakin' as a Christian to a bloomin'
+'eathen wot's done 'imself pretty well, judgin' from the size of 'is
+pinafore, you'd better send for the coachman, 'arness up that there dray
+o' yours, carry orf them bits o' sticks an' let bygones be bygones.
+Ain't that good advice?" He turned to the policeman for corroboration.
+
+There was a flicker of a smile at the corners of the policeman's mouth,
+which seemed not so very many years before to have been lisping baby
+language. He looked at the big man. It was not for him to advise.
+
+"'Ere, Charley, blaaarst you," cried the big man, pushing his way to the
+gate. He had decided that the dice had gone against him. "Get them
+things on to the blinkin' barrer, you stutterin' young pup. Wot the
+purple----"
+
+"Here, that's enough of that," said a quiet, determined voice, and the
+soft lines of the policeman's face hardened.
+
+"Wot she want to say it was to let for?" he grumbled as he loped towards
+the hand-cart.
+
+"'Ere 'ave I come wiv all these things to take the blinkin' 'ouse, then
+there's all this ruddy fuss. Are you goin' to get over into that
+blinkin' garden and fetch out them stutterin' things, or must I chuck
+you over?"
+
+The last remark was addressed to Charley, who, with a wary eye on his
+parent, had been watching events, hoping against hope that the policeman
+would manifest signs of aggression, and carry on the good work that Mrs.
+Bindle had begun.
+
+Charley glanced interrogatingly at the policeman. Seeing in his eye no
+encouragement to mutiny, he sidled towards the gate, a watchful eye
+still on his father. A moment later he was engaged in handing the
+furniture over the railings.
+
+After the man had deposited the colander, a tin-bath, and two saucepans
+in the barrow, he seemed suddenly smitten with an idea.
+
+He tugged a soiled newspaper from his trouser pocket. Glancing at it, he
+walked over to where the policeman was engaged in moving on the crowd.
+
+"Read that," he said, thrusting the paper under the officer's nose and
+pointing to a passage with a dirty forefinger. "Don't that say the
+blinkin' 'ouse is to let? You oughter run 'er in for false----" He
+paused. "For false----" he repeated.
+
+With a motion of his hand, the policeman brushed aside the newspaper.
+
+"Move along there, please. Don't block up the footpath," he said.
+
+At length the barrow was laden.
+
+The policeman stood by with the air of a man whose duty it is to see the
+thing through.
+
+The crowd still loitered. They had even yet hopes of a breach of the
+peace.
+
+The big man was reluctant to go without a final effort to rehabilitate
+himself. Once more he drew the paper from his pocket and approached the
+policeman.
+
+"Wot she put that in for?" he demanded, indicating the advertisement.
+
+Ignoring the remark, the policeman drew his notebook once more from his
+pocket.
+
+"I shall want your name and address," he said with an official air.
+
+"Wotjer want it for?"
+
+"Now, then, come along," said the policeman, and the big man gave his
+name and address.
+
+"Wot she do it for?" he repeated, "an' wot's going to 'appen to 'er for
+'ittin' me in the stummick?"
+
+"You'd better get along," said the policeman.
+
+With a grumble in his throat, the big man placed himself between the
+shafts of the barrow and, having blasted Charley into action, moved off.
+
+"Made a rare mess of the garding, ain't 'e?" remarked the rag-and-bone
+man to the woman with the tweed cap and the hat-pin.
+
+"Blinkin' profiteer!" was her comment.
+
+
+II
+
+"It's all your fault. Look wot they done." Mrs. Bindle surveyed the
+desolation which, that morning, had been a garden.
+
+The bed was trodden down, the geraniums broken, and the lobelia border
+showed big gaps in its blue and greenness.
+
+"It's always the same with anything I 'ave," she continued. "You always
+spoil it."
+
+"But it wasn't me," protested Bindle. "It was that big cove with the
+pinafore."
+
+"Who put that advertisement in?" demanded Mrs. Bindle darkly. "That's
+what _I_ should like to know."
+
+"Somebody wot 'ad put the wrong number," suggested Bindle.
+
+"I'd wrong number them if I caught them."
+
+Suddenly she turned and made a bolt inside the house.
+
+Bindle regarded the open door in surprise. A moment later his quick ears
+caught the sound of Mrs. Bindle's hysterical sobbing.
+
+"Now ain't that jest like a woman?" was his comment. "She put 'im to
+sleep in the first round, an' still she ain't 'appy. Funny things,
+women," he added.
+
+That evening as Mrs. Bindle closed the front door behind her on her way
+to the Wednesday temperance service, she turned her face to the garden;
+it had been in her mind all day.
+
+She blinked incredulously. The lobelia seemed bluer than ever, and
+within the circular border was a veritable riot of flowering geraniums.
+
+"It's that Bindle again," she muttered with indrawn lips as she turned
+towards the gate. "Pity he hasn't got something better to do with his
+money." Nevertheless she placed upon the supper-table an apple-tart that
+had been made for to-morrow's dinner, to which she added a cup of
+coffee, of which Bindle was particularly fond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY
+
+
+I
+
+"I see they're starting summer-camps." Mrs. Bindle looked up from
+reading the previous evening's paper. She was invariably twelve hours
+late with the world's news.
+
+Bindle continued his breakfast. He was too absorbed in Mrs. Bindle's
+method of serving dried haddock with bubble-and-squeak to evince much
+interest in alien things.
+
+"That's right," she continued after a pause, "don't you answer. Your
+ears are in your stomach. Pleasant companion you are. I might as well be
+on a desert island for all the company you are."
+
+"If you wasn't such a damn good cook, Mrs. B., I might find time to say
+pretty things to you." It was only in relation to her own cooking that
+Bindle's conversational lapses passed without rebuke.
+
+"There are to be camps for men, camps for women, and family camps,"
+continued Mrs. Bindle without raising her eyes from the paper before
+her.
+
+"Personally myself I says put me among the gals." The remark reached
+Mrs. Bindle through a mouthful of haddock and bubble-and-squeak, plus a
+fish-bone.
+
+"You don't deserve to have a decent home, the way you talk."
+
+There were times when no answer, however gentle, was capable of turning
+aside Mrs. Bindle's wrath. On Sunday mornings in particular she found
+the burden of Bindle's transgressions weigh heavily upon her.
+
+Bindle sucked contentedly at a hollow tooth. He was feeling generously
+inclined towards all humanity. Haddock, bubble-and-squeak, and his own
+philosophy enabled him to withstand the impact of Mrs. Bindle's most
+vigorous offensive.
+
+"It's years since I had a holiday," she continued complainingly.
+
+"It is, Mrs. B.," agreed Bindle, drawing his pipe from his coat pocket
+and proceeding to charge it from a small oblong tin box. "We ain't
+exactly wot you'd call an 'oneymoon couple, you an' me."
+
+"The war's over."
+
+"It is," he agreed.
+
+"Then why can't we have a holiday?" she demanded, looking up
+aggressively from her paper.
+
+"Now I asks you, Mrs. B.," he said, as he returned the tin box to his
+pocket, "can you see you an' me in a bell-tent, or paddlin', or playin'
+ring-a-ring-a-roses?" and he proceeded to light his pipe with the
+blissful air of a man who knows that it is Sunday, and that The Yellow
+Ostrich will open its hospitable doors a few hours hence.
+
+"It says they're very comfortable," Mrs. Bindle continued, her eyes
+still glued to the paper.
+
+"Wot is?"
+
+"The tents."
+
+"You ought to ask Ging wot a bell-tent's like, 'e'd sort o' surprise
+you. It's worse'n a wife, 'otter than religion, colder than a
+blue-ribboner. When it's 'ot it bakes you, when it's cold it lets you
+freeze, and when it's blowin' 'ell an' tinkers, it 'oofs it, an' leaves
+you with nothink on, a-blushin' like a curate 'avin' 'is first dip with
+the young women in the choir. That's wot a bell-tent is, Mrs. B. In the
+army they calls 'em 'ell-tents."
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me," she snapped as she rose and proceeded to clear
+away the breakfast-things, during which she expressed the state of her
+feelings by the vigour with which she banged every utensil she handled.
+As she did so Bindle proceeded to explain and expound the salient
+characteristics of the army bell-tent.
+
+"When you wants it to stand up," he continued, "it comes down, you bein'
+underneath. When you wants it to come down, nothing on earth'll move it,
+till you goes inside to 'ave a look round an' see wot's the trouble,
+then down it comes on top o' you. It's a game, that's wot it is," he
+added with conviction, "a game wot nobody ain't goin' to win but the
+tent."
+
+"Go on talking, you're not hurting me," said Mrs. Bindle, with indrawn
+lower lip, as she brought down the teapot upon the dresser with a super
+bang.
+
+"I've 'eard Ging talk o' twins, war, women, an' the beer-shortage; but
+to 'ear 'im at 'is best, you got to get 'im to talk about bell-tents."
+
+"Everybody else has a holiday except me." Mrs. Bindle was not to be
+diverted from her subject. "Here am I, slavin' my fingers to the bone,
+inchin' and pinchin' to keep you in comfort, an' I can't 'ave a holiday.
+It's a shame, that's what it is, and it's all your fault." She paused in
+the act of wiping out the inside of the frying-pan, and stood before
+Bindle like an accusing fury. Anger always sullied the purity of her
+diction.
+
+"Well, why don't you 'ave an 'oliday if you set yer 'eart on it? I ain't
+got nothink to say agin it." He continued to puff contentedly at his
+pipe, wondering what had become of the paper-boy. Bindle had become too
+inured to the lurid qualities of domesticity to allow them to perturb
+him.
+
+"'Ow can I go alone?"
+
+"You'd be safe enough."
+
+"You beast!" Bindle was startled by the vindictiveness with which the
+words were uttered.
+
+For a few minutes there was silence, punctuated by Mrs. Bindle's
+vigorous clearing away. Presently she passed over to the sink and turned
+on the tap.
+
+"Nice thing for a married woman to go away alone," she hurled at Bindle
+over her shoulder, amidst the rushing of water.
+
+"Well, take 'Earty," he suggested, with the air of a man anxious to find
+a way out of a difficulty.
+
+"You're a dirty-minded beast," was the retort.
+
+"An' this Sunday, too. Oh, naughty!"
+
+"You never take me anywhere." Mrs. Bindle was not to be denied.
+
+"I took you to church once," he said reminiscently.
+
+"Why don't you take me out now?" she demanded, ignoring his remark.
+
+"Well," he remarked, as he dug into the bowl of his pipe with a
+match-stick, "when you caught a bus, you don't go on a-runnin' after it,
+do you?"
+
+"Why don't you get a week off and take me away?"
+
+"Well, I'll think about it." Bindle rose and, picking up his hat, left
+the room, with the object of seeking the missing paper-boy.
+
+The loneliness of her life was one of Mrs. Bindle's stock grievances. If
+she had been reminded of the Chinese proverb that to have friends you
+must deserve friends, she would have waxed scornful. Friends, she seemed
+to think, were a matter of luck, like a goose in a raffle, or a rich
+uncle.
+
+"It's little enough pleasure I get," she would cry, in moments of
+passionate protest.
+
+To this, Bindle would sometimes reply that "it's wantin' a thing wot
+makes you get it." Sometimes he would go on to elaborate the theory into
+the impossibility of "'avin' a thing for supper an' savin' it for
+breakfast."
+
+By this, he meant to convey to Mrs. Bindle that she was too set on
+post-mortem joys to get the full flavour of those of this world.
+
+Mrs. Bindle possessed the soul of a potential martyr. If she found she
+were enjoying herself, she would become convinced that, somewhere
+associated with it, must be Sin with a capital "S", unless of course the
+enjoyment were directly connected with the chapel.
+
+She was fully convinced that it was wrong to be happy. Laughter inspired
+her with distrust, as laughter rose from carnal thoughts carnally
+expressed. She fought with a relentless courage the old Adam within
+herself, inspired always by the thought that her reward would come in
+another and a better world.
+
+Her theology was that you must give up in this world all that your
+"carnal nature" cries out for, and your reward in the next world will be
+a sort of perpetual jamboree, where you will see the damned being boiled
+in oil, or nipped with red-hot pincers by little devils with curly
+tails. In this she had little to learn either from a Dante, or the
+Spanish Inquisition.
+
+The Biblical descriptions of heaven she accepted in all their
+literalness. She expected golden streets and jewelled gates, wings of
+ineffable whiteness and harps of an inspired sweetness, the whole
+composed by an orchestra capable of playing without break or interval.
+
+She insisted that the world was wicked, just as she insisted that it was
+miserable. She struggled hard to bring the light of salvation to Bindle,
+and she groaned in spirit at his obvious happiness, knowing that to be
+happy was to be damned.
+
+To her, a soul was what a scalp is to the American Indian. She strove
+to collect them, knowing that the believer who went to salvation with
+the greatest number of saved souls dangling at her girdle, would be
+thrice welcome, and thrice blessed.
+
+In Bindle's case, however, she had to fall back upon the wheat that fell
+upon stony ground. With a cheerfulness that he made no effort to
+disguise, Bindle declined to be saved.
+
+"Look 'ere, Lizzie," he would say cheerily. "Two 'arps is quite enough
+for one family and, as you and 'Earty are sure of 'em, you leave me
+alone."
+
+One of Mrs. Bindle's principal complaints against Bindle was that he
+never took her out.
+
+"You could take me out fast enough once," she would complain.
+
+"But where'm I to take you?" cried Bindle. "You don't like the pictures,
+you won't go to the 'alls, and I can't stand that smelly little chapel
+of yours, listenin' to a cove wot tells you 'ow uncomfortable you're
+goin' to be when you're cold meat."
+
+"You could take me for a walk, couldn't you?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"When I takes you round the 'ouses, you bully-rags me because I
+cheer-o's my pals, and if we passes a pub you makes pleasant little
+remarks about gin-palaces. Tell you wot it is, Mrs. B.," he remarked on
+one occasion, "you ain't good company, at least not in this world," he
+added.
+
+"That's right, go on," Mrs. Bindle would conclude. "Why did you marry
+me?"
+
+"There, Mrs. B.," he would reply, "you 'ave me beaten."
+
+From the moment that Mrs. Bindle read of the Bishop of Fulham's
+Summer-Camps for Tired Workers, she became obsessed by the idea of a
+holiday in a summer-camp. She was one of the first to apply for the
+literature that was advertised as distributed free.
+
+The evening-paper that Bindle brought home possessed a new interest for
+her.
+
+"Anything about the summer-camps?" she would ask, interrupting Bindle in
+his study of the cricket and racing news, until at last he came to hate
+the very name of summer-camps and all they implied.
+
+"That's the worst o' religion," he grumbled one night at The Yellow
+Ostrich; "it comes a-buttin' into your 'ome life, an' then there ain't
+no peace."
+
+"I don't 'old wiv religion," growled Ginger.
+
+"I ain't got nothink to say against religion _as_ religion," Bindle had
+remarked; "but I bars summer-camps."
+
+Mrs. Bindle, however, was packing. With all the care of a practised
+housewife, she first devoted herself to the necessary cooking-utensils.
+She packed and unpacked half-a-dozen times a day, always stowing away
+some article that, a few minutes later, she found she required.
+
+Her conversation at meal-times was devoted exclusively to what they
+should take with them. She asked innumerable questions, none of which
+Bindle was able satisfactorily to answer. To him the bucolic life was a
+closed book; but he soon realised that a holiday at the Surrey
+Summer-Camp was inevitable.
+
+"Wot am I to do in a summer-camp?" he mumbled, one evening after supper.
+"I can drive an 'orse, if some one's leadin' it, an' I knows it's an 'en
+wot lays the eggs an' the cock wot makes an 'ell of a row in the
+mornin', same as them ole 'orrors we used to 'ave; but barrin' that, I'm
+done."
+
+"That's right," broke in Mrs. Bindle, "try and spoil my pleasure, it's
+little enough I get."
+
+"But wot are we goin' to do in the country?" persisted Bindle with
+wrinkled forehead. "I don't like gardenin', an'----"
+
+"Pity you don't," she snapped.
+
+"Yes, it's a pity," he agreed; "still, it's saved me an 'ell of a lot o'
+back-aches. But wot are we goin' to do in a summer-camp, that's wot I
+want to know."
+
+"You'll be getting fresh air and--and you can watch the sunsets."
+
+"But the sun ain't goin' to set all day," he persisted. "Besides, I can
+see the sunset from Putney Bridge, an' damn good sunsets too, for them
+as likes 'em. There ain't no need to go to a summer-camp to see a
+sunset."
+
+"You can go on, you're not hurting me." Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips and
+sat looking straight in front of her, a grim figure of Christian
+patience.
+
+"I can't milk a cow," Bindle continued disconsolately, reviewing his
+limitations. "I can't catch chickens, me with various veins in my legs,
+I 'ates the smell o' pigs, an' I ain't good at weedin' gardens. Now I
+asks you, Mrs. B., wot use am I at a summer-camp? I'll only be a sort o'
+fly in the drippin'."
+
+"You can enjoy yourself, I suppose, can't you?" she snapped.
+
+"But 'ow?"
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me. I'm sick and tired of your grumbling, with your
+don't like this, an' your don't like that. Pity you haven't something to
+grumble about."
+
+"But I ain't----"
+
+"There's many men would be glad to have a home like yours, an' chance
+it."
+
+"Naughty!" cried Bindle, wagging an admonitory finger at her. "If I----"
+
+"Stop it!" she cried, jumping up, and making a dash for the fire, which
+she proceeded to poke into extinction.
+
+Meanwhile, Bindle had stopped it, seizing the opportunity whilst Mrs.
+Bindle was engaged with the fire, to slip out to The Yellow Ostrich.
+
+
+II
+
+"Looks a bit lonely, don't it?" Bindle gazed about him doubtfully.
+
+"What did you expect in the country?" snapped Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Well, a tram or a bus would make it look more 'ome-like."
+
+The Bindles were standing on the down platform of Boxton Station
+surrounded by their luggage. There was a Japanese basket bursting to
+reveal its contents, a large cardboard hat-box, a small leather bag
+without a handle and tied round the middle with string to reinforce a
+dubious fastening. There was a string-bag blatantly confessing to its
+heterogeneous contents, and a roll of blankets, through the centre of
+which poked Mrs. Bindle's second-best umbrella, with a travesty of a
+parrot's head for a handle.
+
+There was a small deal box without a lid and marked "Tate's Sugar," and
+a frying-pan done up in newspaper, but still obviously a frying-pan.
+Finally there was a small tin-bath, full to overflowing, and covered by
+a faded maroon-coloured table-cover that had seen better days.
+
+Bindle looked down ruefully at the litter of possessions that formed an
+oasis on a desert of platform.
+
+"They ain't afraid of anythink 'appening 'ere," he remarked, as he
+looked about him. "Funny little 'ole, I calls it."
+
+Mrs. Bindle was obviously troubled. She had been clearly told at the
+temporary offices of the Committee of the Summer-Camps for Tired
+Workers, that a cart met the train by which she and Bindle had
+travelled; yet nowhere was there a sign of life. Vainly in her own mind
+she strove to associate Bindle with the cause of their standing alone on
+a country railway-platform, surrounded by so uninviting a collection of
+luggage.
+
+Presently an old man was observed leaving the distant signal-box and
+hobbling slowly towards them. When within a few yards of the Bindles, he
+halted and gazed doubtfully, first at them, then at the pile of their
+possessions. Finally he removed his cap of office as railway porter, and
+scratched his head dubiously.
+
+"I missed un that time," he said at length, as he replaced his cap.
+
+"Missed who?" enquired Bindle.
+
+"The four-forty," replied the old man, stepping aside to get a better
+view of the luggage. "Got a-talkin' to Young Tom an' clean forgot un."
+It was clear that he regarded the episode in the light of a good joke.
+"Yours?" he queried a moment later, indicating with a jerk of his head
+the litter on the platform.
+
+"Got it first time, grandpa," said Bindle cheerfully. "We come to start
+a pawnshop in these parts," he added.
+
+The porter looked at Bindle with a puzzled expression, then his gaze
+wandered back to the luggage and finally on to Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"We've come to join the Summer-Camp," she explained.
+
+"The Summer-Camp!" repeated the man, "the Summer-Camp!" Then he suddenly
+broke into a breeze of chuckles. He looked from Mrs. Bindle to the
+luggage and from the luggage to Bindle, little gusts of throaty croaks
+eddying and flowing. Finally with a resounding smack he brought his hand
+down upon his fustian thigh.
+
+"Well, I'm danged," he chuckled, "if that ain't a good un. I maun go an'
+tell Young Tom," and he turned preparatory to making off for the
+signal-box.
+
+Bindle, however, by a swift movement barred his way.
+
+"If it's as funny as all that, ole sport, wot's the matter with tellin'
+us all about it?"
+
+Once more the old man stuttered off into a fugue of chuckles.
+
+"Young Tom'll laugh over this, 'e will," he gasped; "'e'll split
+'isself."
+
+"I suppose they don't 'ave much to amuse 'em," said Bindle patiently.
+"Now then, wot's it all about?" he demanded.
+
+"Wrong station," spluttered the ancient. Then a moment later he added,
+"You be wantin' West Boxton. Camp's there. Three mile away. There ain't
+another train stoppin' here to-night," he added.
+
+Mrs. Bindle looked at Bindle. Her lips had disappeared; but she said
+nothing. The arrangements had been entirely in her hands, and it was she
+who had purchased the tickets.
+
+"How far did you say it was?" she demanded of the porter in a tone that
+seemed, as if by magic, to dry up the fountain of his mirth.
+
+"Three mile, mum," he replied, making a shuffling movement in the
+direction of where Young Tom stood beside his levers, all unconscious of
+the splendid joke that had come to cheer his solitude. Mrs. Bindle,
+however, placed herself directly in his path, grim and determined. The
+man fell back a pace, casting an appealing look at Bindle.
+
+"Where can we get a cart?" she demanded with the air of one who has
+taken an important decision.
+
+The porter scratched his head through his cap and considered deeply,
+then with a sudden flank movement and a muttered, "I'll ask Young Tom,"
+he shuffled off in the direction of the signal-box.
+
+Bindle gazed dubiously at the pile of their possessions, and then at
+Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Three miles," he muttered. "You didn't ought to be trusted out with a
+young chap like me, Mrs. B.," he said reproachfully.
+
+"That's enough, Bindle."
+
+Without another word she stalked resolutely along the platform in the
+direction of the signal-box. The old porter happening to glance over his
+shoulder saw her coming, and broke into a shambling trot, determined to
+obtain the moral support of Young Tom before another encounter.
+
+Drawing his pipe from his pocket, Bindle sank down upon the tin-bath,
+jumping up instantly, conscious that something had given way beneath him
+with a crack suggestive of broken crockery. Reseating himself upon the
+bundle of blankets, he proceeded to smoke contentedly. After all,
+something would happen, something always did.
+
+Twenty minutes elapsed before Mrs. Bindle returned with the announcement
+that the signalman had telegraphed to West Boxton for a cart.
+
+"Well, well," said Bindle philosophically, "it's turnin' out an 'appy
+day; but I could do with a drink."
+
+An hour later a cart rumbled its noisy way up to the station, outside
+which stood the Bindles and their luggage. A business-like little boy
+scout slid off the tail.
+
+"You want to go to the Camp?" he asked briskly.
+
+"Well," began Bindle, "I can't say that I----"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Bindle, seeing in the boy scout her St. George;
+"we got out at the wrong station." She looked across at Bindle as she
+spoke, as if to indicate where lay the responsibility for the mistake.
+
+"All right!" said the friend of all the world. "We'll soon get you
+there."
+
+"An' who might you be, young-fellow-my-lad?" enquired Bindle.
+
+"I'm Patrol-leader Smithers of the Bear Patrol," was the response.
+
+"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Well, well, it's live an' learn, ain't
+it?"
+
+"Now we'll get the luggage up," said Patrol-leader Smithers.
+
+"'Ow 'Aig an' Foch must miss you," remarked Bindle as between them they
+hoisted up the tin-bath; but the lad was too intent upon the work on
+hand for persiflage.
+
+A difficulty presented itself in how Mrs. Bindle was to get into the
+cart. Her intense sensitiveness, coupled with the knowledge that there
+would be four strange pairs of male eyes watching her, constituted a
+serious obstacle. Young Tom, in whom was nothing of the spirit of Jack
+Cornwell, and his friend the old porter made no effort to disguise the
+fact that they were determined to see the drama through to the last
+fade-out.
+
+Bindle's suggestion that he should "'oist" her up, Mrs. Bindle had
+ignored, and she flatly refused to climb the spokes of the wheel. The
+step in front was nearly a yard from the ground, and Mrs. Bindle
+resented Young Tom's sandy leer.
+
+It was Patrol-leader Smithers who eventually solved the problem by
+suggesting a dandy-chair, to which Mrs. Bindle reluctantly agreed.
+Accordingly Bindle and the porter crossed arms and clasped one another's
+wrists.
+
+Mrs. Bindle took up a position with her back to the tail of the cart,
+and the two Sir Walters bent down, whilst Patrol-leader Smithers turned
+his back and, with great delicacy, strove to engage the fixed eye of
+Young Tom; but without success.
+
+"Now when I says 'eave--'eave," Bindle admonished the porter.
+
+Gingerly Mrs. Bindle sat down upon their crossed hands.
+
+"One, two, three--'eave!" cried Bindle, and they heaved.
+
+There was a loud guffaw from Young Tom, a stifled scream, and Mrs.
+Bindle was safely in the cart; but on her back, with the soles of her
+elastic-sided boots pointing to heaven. Bindle had under-estimated the
+thews of the porter.
+
+"Right away!" cried Patrol-leader Smithers, feeling that prompt action
+alone could terminate so regrettable an incident, and he and Bindle
+clambered up into the cart, where Mrs. Bindle, having regained control
+of her movements, was angrily tucking her skirts about her.
+
+The cart jerked forward, and Young Tom and his colleague grinned their
+valedictions, in their hearts the knowledge that they had just lived a
+crowded hour of glorious life.
+
+The cart jolted its uneasy way along the dusty high-road, with Bindle
+beside the driver, Mrs. Bindle sitting on the blankets as grim as
+Destiny itself, engaged in working up a case against Bindle, and the boy
+scout watchful and silent, as behoves the leader of an enterprise.
+
+Bindle soon discovered that conversationally the carter was limited to
+the "Aye" of agreement, varied in moments of unwonted enthusiasm with an
+"Oh, aye!"
+
+At the end of half an hour's jolt, squeak, and crunch, the cart turned
+into a lane overhung by giant elms, where the sun-dried ruts were like
+miniature trenches.
+
+"Better hold on," counselled the lad, as he made a clutch at the
+Japanese basket, which was in danger of going overboard. "It's a bit
+bumpy here."
+
+"Fancy place in wet weather," murmured Bindle, as he held on with both
+hands. "So this is the Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers," and he
+gazed about him curiously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SUMMER CAMP FOR TIRED WORKERS
+
+
+The Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers had been planned by the Bishop
+of Fulham out of the largeness of his heart and the plenitude of his
+inexperience in such undertakings. He had borrowed a meadow, acquired a
+cow, hired a marquee, and wangled fifty army bell-tents and a
+field-kitchen, about which in all probability questions would be asked
+in the House. Finally as the result of a brain-wave he had requisitioned
+the local boy scouts. Later there would be the devil to pay with the
+leaders of the Boys' Brigade; but the bishop abounded in tact.
+
+When the time came, the meadow was there, the bell-tents, the cow, and
+the boy scouts duly arrived; but of the marquee nothing had been seen or
+heard, and as for the field-kitchen, the War Office could say little
+beyond the fact that it had left Aldershot.
+
+For days the bishop worked indefatigably with telephone and telegraph,
+endeavouring to trace the errant field-kitchen and the missing marquee;
+but so much of his time had been occupied in obtaining the necessary
+assistance to ensure that the cow was properly and punctually milked,
+that other things, being farther away, had seemed less insistent.
+
+In those days the bishop had much to worry him; but his real cross was
+Daisy, the cow. Everything else was of minor importance compared with
+this bovine responsibility. Vaguely he had felt that if you had a cow
+you had milk; but he was to discover that on occasion a cow could be as
+unproductive of milk as a sea-serpent.
+
+None of the campers had ever approached a cow in her professional
+capacity. Night and morning she had to be relieved of a twelve hours'
+accumulation of milk, all knew that; but how? That was a question which
+had perturbed bishop and campers alike; for the whole camp shared the
+ecclesiastical anxiety about Daisy. Somewhere at the back of the cockney
+mind was the suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that, unless
+regularly milked, cows exploded, like overcharged water-mains.
+
+Daisy soon developed into something more than a cow. When other
+occupations failed (amusements there were none), the campers would
+collect round Daisy, examining her from every angle. She was a mystery,
+just as a juggler or the three-card trick were mysteries, and as such
+she commanded respect.
+
+Each night and morning the bishop had to produce from somewhere a person
+capable of ministering to the requirements of Daisy, and everyone in the
+neighbourhood was extremely busy. Apart from this, West Boxton was a
+hot-bed of Nonconformity, and some of the inhabitants were much
+exercised in their minds as to the spiritual effect upon a Dissenter of
+milking a church cow.
+
+There were times when the bishop felt like a conjurer, billed to produce
+a guinea-pig from a top-hat, who had left the guinea-pig at home.
+
+Daisy was not without her uses, quite apart from those for which she had
+been provided by Providence and the bishop. "Come an' 'ave a look at
+Daisy," had become the conversational forlorn hope of the campers when
+utterly bankrupt of all other interests. She was their shield against
+boredom and the spear with which to slay the dragon of apathy.
+
+"No beer, no pictures, only a ruddy cow," a cynic had remarked in
+summing up the amusements provided by the Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired
+Workers. "Enough to give a giddy flea the blinkin' 'ump," he had
+concluded; but his was only an isolated view. For the most part these
+shipwrecked cockneys were grateful to Daisy, and they never tired of
+watching the milk spurt musically into the bright pail beneath her.
+
+The bishop was well-meaning, but forgetful. In planning his camp he had
+entirely overlooked the difficulty of food and water supplies. The one
+was a mile distant and could not be brought nearer; the other had been
+overcome by laying a pipe, at considerable expense.
+
+In the natural order of disaster the campers had arrived, and in a very
+few hours became tinctured with the heresy of anti-clericalism. Husbands
+quarrelled with wives as to who should bear the responsibility for the
+adventure to which they found themselves committed. One and all
+questioned the right of a bishop to precipitate himself into the
+domestic circle as a bearer of discord and summer-camps.
+
+At the time of the arrival of the Bindles, everything seemed chaos.
+There was a spatter of bell-tents on the face of the meadow, piles of
+personal possessions at the entrance of the tents, whilst the "tired
+workers" loitered about in their shirt sleeves, or strove to prepare
+meals in spite of the handicaps with which they were surrounded. The
+children stood about wide-eyed and grave, as if unable to play their
+urban games in a bucolic setting.
+
+When, under the able command of Patrol-leader Smithers, the Bindles'
+belongings had been piled up just inside the meadow and Mrs. Bindle
+helped down, sore in body and disturbed in temper, the indefatigable boy
+scout led the way towards a tent. He carried the Japanese basket in one
+hand, and the handleless bag under the other arm, whilst Bindle followed
+with the tin-bath, and Mrs. Bindle made herself responsible for the
+bundle of blankets, through the centre of which the parrot-headed
+umbrella peeped out coyly.
+
+Their guide paused at the entrance of a bell-tent, and deposited the
+Japanese basket on the ground.
+
+"This is your tent," he announced, "I'll send one of the patrol to help
+you," and, with the air of one upon whose shoulders rests the destiny
+of planets, he departed.
+
+Bindle and Mrs. Bindle gazed after him, then at each other, finally at
+the tent. Bindle stepped across and put his head inside; but quickly
+withdrew it.
+
+"Smells like a bus on a wet day," he muttered.
+
+With an air of decision Mrs. Bindle entered the tent. As she did so
+Bindle winked gravely at a little boy who had wandered up, and now stood
+awaiting events with blue-eyed gravity. At Bindle's wink he turned and
+trotted off to a neighbouring tent, from the shelter of which he
+continued to watch the domestic tragedy of the new arrivals.
+
+"There are no bedsteads." Mrs. Bindle's voice came from within the tent
+in tones of muffled tragedy.
+
+"You don't say so," said Bindle abstractedly, his attention concentrated
+upon a diminutive knight of the pole, who was approaching their tent.
+
+"Where's the feather beds, 'Orace?" he demanded when the lad was within
+ear-shot.
+
+"There's a waterproof ground-sheet and we supply mattresses of loose
+straw," he announced as he halted sharply within two paces of where
+Bindle stood.
+
+"Oh! you do, do you?" said Bindle, "an' who 'appens to supply the brass
+double-bedstead wot me and Mrs. B. is used to sleep on. P'raps you can
+tell me that, young shaver?"
+
+Before the lad had time to reply, Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance
+of the tent, grimmer and more uncompromising than ever. For a moment she
+eyed the lad severely.
+
+"Where am I to sleep?" she demanded.
+
+"Are you with this gentleman?" enquired the boy scout.
+
+"She is, sonny," said Bindle, "been with me for twenty years now. Can't
+lose 'er no'ow."
+
+"Bindle, behave yourself!" Mrs. Bindle's jaws closed with a snap.
+
+"We're going to 'ave some sacks of straw in place of that missionary's
+bed you an' me sleeps on in Fulham," explained Bindle; but Mrs. Bindle
+had disappeared once more into the tent.
+
+For the next hour the Bindles and their assistant scout were engaged in
+getting the bell-tent into habitable condition. During the process the
+scout explained that the marquee was to have been used for the communal
+meals, which the field-kitchen was to supply; but both had failed to
+arrive, and the bishop had himself gone up to London to make enquiries.
+
+"An' wot's goin' to 'appen to us till 'e runs acrost 'em?" enquired
+Bindle. "I'm feelin' a bit peckish myself now--wot I'll be like in a
+hour's time I don't know."
+
+"I'll show you how to build a scout-fire," volunteered the lad.
+
+"But I ain't a fire-eater," objected Bindle. "I want a bit o' steak, or
+a rasher an' an egg."
+
+"What's the use of a scout-fire to me with kippers to cook?" demanded
+Mrs. Bindle, appearing once more at the entrance of the tent.
+
+At that moment another "tired worker" drifted across to the Bindles'
+tent. He was a long, lean man with a straggling moustache and three
+days' growth of beard. He was in his shirt sleeves, collarless, with
+unbuttoned waistcoat, and he wore a general air of despondency and
+gloom.
+
+"'Ow goes it, mate?" he enquired.
+
+Bindle straightened himself from inspecting the interior of the tin-bath
+which he was unpacking.
+
+"Oh! mid; but I've known wot it is to be 'appier," said Bindle, with a
+grin.
+
+"Same 'ere," was the gloomy response.
+
+"Things sort o' seem to 'ave gone wrong," suggested Bindle
+conversationally.
+
+"That's right," said the man, rubbing the bristles of his chin with a
+meditative thumb.
+
+"'Ow you gettin' on for grub?" asked Bindle.
+
+The man shook his head lugubriously.
+
+"What about a pub?"
+
+"Mile away," gloomed the man.
+
+"Gawd Almighty!" Bindle's exclamation was not concerned with the man's
+remark, but with something he extracted from the bath. "Well, I'm
+blowed," he muttered.
+
+"'Ere, Lizzie," he called out.
+
+Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent. Bindle held up an
+elastic-sided boot from which marmalade fell solemnly and reluctantly.
+
+Then the flood-gates of Mrs. Bindle's wrath burst apart, and she poured
+down upon Bindle's head a deluge of reproach. He and he alone was
+responsible for all the disasters that had befallen them. He had done it
+on purpose because she wanted a holiday. He wasn't a husband, he was a
+blasphemer, an atheist, a cumberer of the earth, and all that was evil.
+
+She was interrupted in her tirade by the approach of a little man with a
+round, bald, shiny head and a worried expression of countenance.
+
+"D'yer know 'ow to milk a cow, mate?" he enquired of Bindle, apparently
+quite unconscious that he had precipitated himself into the midst of a
+domestic scene.
+
+"Do I know 'ow to wot?" demanded Bindle, eyeing the man as if he had
+asked a most unusual question.
+
+"There's a bloomin' cow over there and nobody can't milk 'er, an' the
+bishop's gone, and we wants our tea."
+
+Bindle scratched his head through his cap, then, turning towards the
+tent into which Mrs. Bindle had once more disappeared, he called out:
+
+"Hi, Lizzie, jer know 'ow to milk a cow?"
+
+"Don't be beastly," came the reply from the tent.
+
+"It ain't one of them cows," he called back, "it's a milk cow, an'
+'ere's a cove wot wants 'is tea."
+
+Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent, and surveyed the group
+of three men.
+
+"How did you manage yesterday?" she demanded practically.
+
+"A girl come over from the farm, missis," said the little man, "and she
+didn't 'arf make it milk."
+
+"Hold your tongue," snapped Mrs. Bindle.
+
+The man gazed at her in surprise.
+
+"Why don't you get the same girl?" asked Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"She says she's too busy. I 'ad a try myself," said the man, "only it
+was a washout."
+
+"I'll 'ave a look at 'er," Bindle announced, and the three men moved off
+across the meadow, picking their way among the tents with their piles of
+bedding, blankets, and other impedimenta outside. All were getting ready
+for the night.
+
+When Bindle reached Daisy, he found the problem had been solved by one
+of Mr. Timkins' farm-hands, who was busily at work, watched by an
+interested group of campers.
+
+During the next half-hour, Bindle strolled about among the tents
+learning many things, foremost among which was that "the whole ruddy
+camp was a washout." The commissariat had failed badly, and the nearest
+drink was a mile away at The Trowel and Turtle. A great many things were
+said about the bishop and the organisers of the camp.
+
+When he returned to the tent, he found Mrs. Bindle engaged in boiling
+water in a petrol-tin over a scout-fire. With the providence of a good
+housewife she had brought with her emergency supplies, and Bindle was
+soon enjoying a meal comprised of kipper, tea and bread and margarine.
+When he had finished, he announced himself ready to face the terrors of
+the night.
+
+"I can't say as I likes it," he remarked, as he stood at the entrance to
+the tent, struggling to undo his collar. "Seems to me sort o' draughty."
+
+"That's right, go on," cried Mrs. Bindle, as she pushed past him. "What
+did you expect?"
+
+"Well, since you asks me, I'm like those coves in religion wot expects
+nothink; but gets an 'ell of a lot."
+
+"Don't blaspheme. It's Sunday to-morrow," was the rejoinder; but Bindle
+had strolled away to commune with the man with a stubbly chin and
+pessimistic soul.
+
+"Do yer sleep well, mate?" he enquired, conversationally.
+
+"Crikey! sleep is it? There ain't no blinkin' sleep in this 'ere ruddy
+camp."
+
+"Wot's up?" enquired Bindle.
+
+"Up!" was the lugubrious response. "Awake all last night, I was."
+
+"Wot was you doin'?" queried Bindle with interest.
+
+"Scratchin'!" was the savage retort.
+
+"Scratchin'! Who was you scratchin'?"
+
+"Who was I scratchin'? Who the 'ell should I be scratchin' but myself?"
+he demanded, his apathy momentarily falling from him. "I'd like to know
+where they got that blinkin' straw from wot they give us to lie on. I
+done a bit o' scratchin' in the trenches; but last night I 'adn't enough
+fingers, damn 'em."
+
+Bindle whistled.
+
+"Then," continued the man with gloomy gusto, "there's them ruddy
+chickens in the mornin', a-crowin' their guts out. Not a wink o' sleep
+after three for anybody," he added, with all the hatred of the cockney
+for farmyard sounds. "Oh! it's an 'oliday, all right," he added with
+scathing sarcasm, "only it ain't ours."
+
+"Seems like it," said Bindle drily, as he turned on his heel and made
+for his own tent.
+
+That night, he realised to the full the iniquities of the man who had
+supplied the straw for the mattresses. By the sounds that came from the
+other side of the tent-pole, he gathered that Mrs. Bindle was similarly
+troubled.
+
+Towards dawn, Bindle began to doze, just as the cocks were announcing
+the coming of the sun. If the man with the stubbly chin were right in
+his diagnosis, the birds, like Prometheus, had, during the night,
+renewed their missing organisms.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle. "Ole six-foot-o'-melancholy wasn't
+swinging the lead neither. 'Oly ointment! I never 'eard such a row in
+all my puff. There ain't no doubt but wot Mrs. Bindle's gettin' a
+country 'oliday," and with that he rose and proceeded to draw on his
+trousers, deciding that it was folly to attempt further to seek sleep.
+
+Outside the tent, he came across Patrol-leader Smithers.
+
+"Mornin' Foch," said Bindle.
+
+"Smithers," said the lad. "Patrol-leader Smithers of the Bear Patrol."
+
+"My mistake," said Bindle; "but you an' Foch is jest as like as two
+peas. You don't 'appen to 'ave seen a stray cock about, do you?"
+
+"A cock," repeated the boy.
+
+"Yes!" said Bindle, tilting his head on one side with the air of one
+listening intently, whilst from all sides came the brazen blare of
+ecstatic chanticleers. "I thought I 'eard one just now."
+
+"They're Farmer Timkins' fowls," said Patrol-leader Smithers gravely.
+
+"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Seem to be in good song this mornin'.
+Reg'lar bunch o' canaries."
+
+To this flippancy, Patrol-leader Smithers made no response.
+
+"Does there 'appen to be any place where I can get a rinse, 'Indenberg?"
+he enquired.
+
+"There's a tap over there for men," said Patrol-leader Smithers,
+pointing to the extreme right of the field, "and for ladies over there,"
+he pointed in the opposite direction.
+
+"No mixed bathin', I see," murmured Bindle. "Now, as man to man,
+Ludendorff, which would you advise?"
+
+The lad looked at him with grave eyes. "The men's tap is over there,"
+and again he pointed.
+
+"Well, well," said Bindle, "p'raps you're right; but I ain't fond o'
+takin' a bath in the middle of a field," he muttered.
+
+"The taps are screened off."
+
+"Well, well, live an' learn," muttered Bindle, as he made for the men's
+tap.
+
+When Bindle returned to the tent, he found Patrol-leader Smithers
+instructing Mrs. Bindle in how to coax a scout-fire into activity.
+
+"You mustn't poke it, mum," said the lad. "It goes out if you do."
+
+Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips, and folded the brown mackintosh she was
+wearing more closely about her. She was not accustomed to criticism,
+particularly in domestic matters, and her instinct was to disregard it;
+but the boy's earnestness seemed to discourage retort, and she had
+already seen the evil effect of attacking a scout-fire with a poker.
+
+Suddenly her eye fell upon Bindle, standing in shirt and trousers, from
+the back of which his braces dangled despondently.
+
+"Why don't you go in and dress?" she demanded. "Walking about in that
+state!"
+
+"I been to get a rinse," he explained, as he walked across to the tent
+and disappeared through the aperture.
+
+Mrs. Bindle snorted angrily. She had experienced a bad night, added to
+which the fire had resented her onslaught by incontinently going out,
+necessitating an appeal to a mere child.
+
+Having assumed a collar, a coat and waistcoat, Bindle strolled round
+the camp exchanging a word here and a word there with his fellow
+campers, who, in an atmosphere of intense profanity, were engaged in
+getting breakfast.
+
+"Never 'eard such language," muttered Bindle with a grin. "This 'ere
+little camp'll send a rare lot o' people to a place where they won't
+meet the bishop."
+
+At the end of half-an-hour he returned and found tea, eggs and bacon,
+and Mrs. Bindle waiting for him.
+
+"So you've come at last," she snapped, as he seated himself on a wooden
+box.
+
+"Got it this time," he replied genially, sniffing the air
+appreciatively. "'Ope you got somethink nice for yer little love-bird."
+
+"Don't you love-bird me," cried Mrs. Bindle, who had been looking for
+some one on whom to vent her displeasure. "I suppose you're going to
+leave me to do all the work while you go gallivanting about playing the
+gentleman."
+
+"I don't needs to play it, Mrs. B., I'm IT. Vere de Vere with blood as
+blue as 'Earty's stories."
+
+"If you think I'm going to moil and toil and cook for you down here as I
+do at home, you're mistaken. I came for a rest. I've hardly had a wink
+of sleep all night," she sniffed ominously.
+
+"I thought I 'eard you on the 'unt," said Bindle sympathetically.
+
+"Bindle!" There was warning in her tone.
+
+"But wasn't you?" He looked across at her in surprise, his mouth full of
+eggs and bacon.
+
+"I--I had a disturbed night," she drew in her lips primly.
+
+"So did I," said Bindle gloomily. "I'd 'ave disturbed 'em if I could
+'ave caught 'em. My God! There must 'ave been millions of 'em," he added
+reminiscently.
+
+"If you're going to talk like that, I shall go away," she announced.
+
+"I'd like to meet the cove wot filled them mattresses," was Bindle's
+sinister comment.
+
+"It--it wasn't that," said Mrs. Bindle. "It was the----" She paused for
+a moment.
+
+"Them cocks," he suggested.
+
+"Don't be disgusting, Bindle."
+
+"Disgusting? I never see such a chap as me for bein' lood an' disgustin'
+an' blasphemious. Wot jer call 'em if they ain't cocks?"
+
+"They're roosters--the male birds."
+
+"But they wasn't roostin', blow 'em. They was crowin', like giddy-o."
+
+Mrs. Bindle made no comment; but continued to eat her breakfast.
+
+"Personally, myself, I'm goin' to 'ave a little word with the bishop
+about that little game I 'ad with wot 'appened before wot you call them
+male birds started givin' tongue." He paused to take breath. "I don't
+like to mention wot it was; but I shall itch for a month. 'Ullo Weary!"
+he called out to the long man with the stubbly chin.
+
+The man approached. He was wearing the same lugubrious look and the same
+waistcoat, unbuttoned in just the same manner that it had been
+unbuttoned the day before.
+
+"You was right about them mattresses and the male birds," said Bindle,
+with a glance at Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"The wot?" demanded the man, gazing vacantly at Bindle.
+
+"The male birds."
+
+"'Oo the 'ell--sorry, mum," to Mrs. Bindle. Then turning once more to
+Bindle he added, "Them cocks, you mean?"
+
+"'Ush!" said Bindle. "They ain't cocks 'ere, they're male birds, an'
+roosters on Sunday. You see, my missis----" but Mrs. Bindle had risen
+and, with angry eyes, had disappeared into the tent.
+
+"Got one of 'em?" queried Bindle, jerking his thumb in the direction of
+the aperture of the tent.
+
+The man with the stubbly chin nodded dolefully.
+
+"Thought so," said Bindle. "You looks it."
+
+Whilst Bindle was strolling round the camp with the man with the stubbly
+chin, Mrs. Bindle was becoming better acquainted with the peculiar
+temperament of a bell-tent. She had already realised its disadvantages
+as a dressing-room. It was dark, it was small, it was stuffy. The two
+mattresses occupied practically the whole floor-space and there was
+nowhere to sit. It was impossible to move about freely, owing to the
+restrictions of space in the upper area.
+
+Having washed the breakfast-things, peeled the potatoes, supplied by Mr.
+Timkins through Patrol-leader Smithers, and prepared for the oven a
+small joint of beef she had brought with her, Mrs. Bindle once more
+withdrew into the tent.
+
+When she eventually re-appeared in brown alpaca with a bonnet to match,
+upon which rested two purple pansies, Bindle had just returned from what
+he called "a nose round," during which he had made friends with most of
+the campers, men, women and children, who were not already his friends.
+
+At the sight of Mrs. Bindle he whistled softly.
+
+"You can show me where the bakers is," she said icily, as she proceeded
+to draw on a pair of brown kid gloves. The inconveniences arising from
+dressing in a bell-tent had sorely ruffled her temper.
+
+"The bakers!" he repeated stupidly.
+
+"Yes, the bakers," she repeated. "I suppose you don't want to eat your
+dinner raw."
+
+Then Bindle strove to explain the composite tragedy of the missing
+field-kitchen and marquee, to say nothing of the bishop.
+
+In small communities news travels quickly, and the Bindles soon found
+themselves the centre of a group of men and women (with children holding
+a watching brief), all anxious to volunteer information, mainly on the
+subject of misguided bishops who got unsuspecting townsmen into the
+country under false pretences.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was a good housewife, and she had come prepared with rations
+sufficient for the first two days. She had, however, depended upon the
+statements contained in the prospectus of the S.C.T.W., that cooking
+facilities would be provided by the committee.
+
+She strove to control the anger that was rising within her. It was the
+Sabbath, and she was among strangers.
+
+Although ready and willing to volunteer information, the other campers
+saw no reason to restrain their surprise and disapproval of Mrs.
+Bindle's toilette. The other women were in their work-a-day attire, as
+befitted housewives who had dinners to cook under severe handicaps, and
+they resented what they regarded as a newcomer's "swank."
+
+That first day of the holiday, for which she had fought with such grim
+determination, lived long in Mrs. Bindle's memory. Dinner she contrived
+with the aid of the frying-pan and the saucepan she had brought with
+her. It would have taken something more than the absence of a
+field-kitchen to prevent Mrs. Bindle from doing what she regarded as her
+domestic duty.
+
+The full sense of her tragedy, however, manifested itself when, dinner
+over, she had washed-up.
+
+There was nothing to do until tea-time. Bindle had disappeared with the
+man with the stubbly chin and two others in search of the nearest
+public-house, a mile away. Patrol-leader Smithers was at Sunday-school,
+whilst her fellow-campers showed no inclination to make advances.
+
+She walked for a little among the other tents; but her general demeanour
+was not conducive to hasty friendships. She therefore returned to the
+tent and wrote to Mr. Hearty, telling him, on the authority of
+Patrol-leader Smithers, that Mr. Timkins had a large quantity of
+excellent strawberries for sale.
+
+Mr. Hearty was a greengrocer who had one eye on business and the other
+eye on God, in case of accidents. On hearing that the Bindles were going
+into the country, his mind had instinctively flown to fruit and
+vegetables. He had asked Mrs. Bindle to "drop him a postcard" (Mr.
+Hearty was always economical in the matter of postages, even other
+people's postages) if she heard of anything that she thought might
+interest him.
+
+Mrs. Bindle told in glowing terms the story of Farmer Timkins' hoards of
+strawberries, giving the impression that he was at a loss what to do
+with them.
+
+Three o'clock brought the bishop and a short open-air service, which was
+attended by the entire band of campers, with the exception of Bindle and
+his companions.
+
+The bishop was full of apologies for the past and hope for the future.
+In place of a sermon he gave an almost jovial address; but there were no
+answering smiles. Everyone was wondering what they could do until it was
+time for bed, the more imaginative going still further and speculating
+what they were to do when they got there.
+
+"My friends," the bishop concluded, "we must not allow trifling mishaps
+to discourage us. We are here to enjoy ourselves."
+
+And the campers returned to their tents as Achilles had done a few
+thousand years before, dark of brow and gloomy of heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MR. HEARTY ENCOUNTERS A BULL
+
+
+I
+
+"He's sure to lose his way across the fields," cried Mrs. Bindle
+angrily.
+
+"'Earty's too careful to lose anythink," said Bindle, as, from a small
+tin box, he crammed tobacco into his pipe. "'E's used to the narrow way
+'e is," he added.
+
+"You ought to have gone to meet him."
+
+"My legs is feelin' a bit tired----" began Bindle, who enjoyed his
+brother-in-law's society only when there were others to enjoy it with
+him.
+
+"Bother your legs," she snapped.
+
+"Supposin' you 'ad various veins in your legs."
+
+"Don't be nasty."
+
+"Well, wot jer want to talk about my legs for, if I mustn't talk about
+yours," he grumbled.
+
+"You've got a lewd mind, Bindle," she retorted, "and you know it."
+
+"Well, any'ow, I ain't got lood legs."
+
+She drew in her lips; but said nothing.
+
+"I don't know wot 'Earty wants to come down to a funny little 'ole like
+this for," grumbled Bindle, as they walked across the meadow adjoining
+the camping-ground, making for a spot that would give them a view of the
+field-path leading to the station.
+
+"It's because he wants to buy some fruit."
+
+"I thought there was somethink at the back of the old bird's mind," he
+remarked. "'Earty ain't one to spend railway fares jest for the love o'
+seein' you an' me, Mrs. B. It's apples 'es after--reg'lar old Adam 'e
+is. You only got to watch 'im with them gals in the choir."
+
+"If you talk like that I shall leave you," she cried angrily; "and it's
+strawberries, apples aren't in yet," she added, as if that were a
+circumstance in Mr. Hearty's favour.
+
+Mr. Hearty had proved himself to be a man of action. Mrs. Bindle's
+glowing account of vast stores of strawberries, to be had almost for the
+asking, had torn from him a telegram announcing that he would be at the
+Summer-Camp for Tired Workers soon after two o'clock that, Monday,
+afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was almost genial at the prospect of seeing her
+brother-in-law, and earning his thanks for assistance rendered.
+Conditions at the camp remained unchanged. After the service on the
+previous day, the bishop had once more disappeared, ostensibly in
+pursuit of the errant field-kitchen and marquee, promising to return
+early the following afternoon.
+
+Arrived at the gate on the further side of the field, Bindle paused.
+Then, as Mrs. Bindle refused his suggestion that he should "'oist" her
+up, he himself climbed on to the top-rail and sat contentedly smoking.
+
+"I don't seem to see 'Earty a-walkin' across a field," he remarked
+meditatively. "It don't seem natural."
+
+"You can't see anything but what's in your own wicked mind," she
+retorted acidly.
+
+"Well, well!" he said philosophically. "P'raps you're right. I suppose
+we shall see them merry whiskers of 'is a-comin' round the corner, 'im
+a-leadin' a lamb with a pink ribbon. I can see 'Earty with a little
+lamb, an' a sprig o' mint for the sauce."
+
+For nearly a quarter of an hour Bindle smoked in silence, whilst Mrs.
+Bindle stood with eyes fixed upon a stile on the opposite side of the
+field, over which Mr. Hearty was due to come.
+
+"What was that?"
+
+Involuntarily she clutched Bindle's knee, as a tremendous roar broke the
+stillness of the summer afternoon.
+
+"That's ole Farmer Timkins' bull," explained Bindle. "Rare ole sport, 'e
+is. Tossed a cove last week, an' made a rare mess of 'im."
+
+"It oughtn't to be allowed."
+
+"Wot?"
+
+"Dangerous animals like that," was the retort.
+
+"Well, personally myself, I likes a cut o' veal," Bindle remarked,
+watching Mrs. Bindle covertly; but her thoughts were intent on Mr.
+Hearty, and the allusion passed unnoticed.
+
+"It 'ud be a bad thing for ole 'Earty, if that bull was to get 'im by
+the back o' the trousers," mused Bindle. "'Ullo, there 'e is." He
+indicated with the stem of his pipe a point in the hedge on the right
+of the field, over which was thrust a great dun-coloured head.
+
+Again the terrifying roar split the air. Instinctively Mrs. Bindle
+recoiled, and gripped the parrot-headed umbrella she was carrying.
+
+"It's trying to get through. I'm not going to wait here," she announced
+with decision. "It may----"
+
+"Don't you worry, Mrs. B.," he reassured her. "'E ain't one o' the
+jumpin' sort. Besides, there's an 'edge between 'im an' us, not to speak
+o' this 'ere gate."
+
+Mrs. Bindle retired a yard or two, her eyes still on the dun-coloured
+head.
+
+So absorbed were she and Bindle in watching the bull, that neither of
+them saw Mr. Hearty climbing the opposite stile.
+
+As he stood on the topmost step, silhouetted against the blue sky, the
+tails of his frock-coat flapping, Bindle caught sight of him.
+
+"'Ullo, 'ere's old 'Earty!" he cried, waving his hand.
+
+Mr. Hearty descended gingerly to terra firma, then, seeing Mrs. Bindle,
+he raised his semi-clerical felt hat. In such matters, Mr. Hearty was
+extremely punctilious.
+
+At that moment the bull appeared to catch sight of the figure with the
+flapping coat-tails.
+
+It made a tremendous onslaught upon the hedge, and there was a sound of
+crackling branches; but the hedge held.
+
+"Call out to him, Bindle. Shout! Warn him! Do you hear?" cried Mrs.
+Bindle excitedly.
+
+"'E's all right," said Bindle complacently. "That there bull ain't
+a-goin' to get through an 'edge like that."
+
+"Mr. Hearty, there's a bull! Run!"
+
+Mrs. Bindle's thin voice entirely failed to carry to where Mr. Hearty
+was walking with dignity and unconcern, regardless of the danger which
+Mrs. Bindle foresaw threatened him.
+
+The bull made another attack upon the hedge. Mr. Hearty's flapping
+coat-tails seemed to goad it to madness. There was a further crackling
+and the massive shoulders of the animal now became visible; but still it
+was unable to break through.
+
+"Call out to him, Bindle. He'll be killed, and it'll be your fault," she
+cried hysterically, pale and trembling with anxiety.
+
+"Look out, 'Earty!" yelled Bindle. "There's a bloomin' bull," and he
+pointed in the direction of the hedge; but the bull had disappeared.
+
+Mr. Hearty looked towards the point indicated; but, seeing nothing,
+continued his dignified way, convinced that Bindle was once more
+indulging in what Mr. Hearty had been known to describe as "his untimely
+jests."
+
+He was within some fifty yards of the gate where the Bindles awaited
+him, when there was a terrific crash followed by a mighty roar--the bull
+was through. It had retreated apparently in order to charge the hedge
+and break through by virtue of its mighty bulk.
+
+Bindle yelled, Mrs. Bindle screamed, and Mr. Hearty gave one wild look
+over his shoulder and, with terror in his eyes and his semi-clerical hat
+streaming behind, attached only by a hat-guard, he ran as he had never
+run before.
+
+Bindle clambered down from the gate so as to leave the way clear, and
+Mrs. Bindle thrust her umbrella into Bindle's hands. She had always been
+told that no bull would charge an open umbrella.
+
+"Come on, 'Earty!" yelled Bindle. "Run like 'ell!" In his excitement he
+squatted down on his haunches, for all the world like a man encouraging
+a whippet.
+
+Mr. Hearty ran, and the bull, head down and with a snorting noise that
+struck terror to the heart of the fugitive, ran also.
+
+"Run, Mr. Hearty, run!" screamed Mrs. Bindle again.
+
+The bull was running diagonally in the direction of Mr. Hearty's fleeing
+figure. In this it was at a disadvantage.
+
+"Get ready to help him over," cried Mrs. Bindle, terror clutching at her
+heart.
+
+"Looks to me as if 'Earty and the bull and the whole bloomin'
+caboodle'll come over together," muttered Bindle.
+
+"Oooooh!"
+
+A new possibility seemed to strike Mrs. Bindle and, with a terrified
+look at the approaching bull, which at that moment gave utterance to a
+super-roar, she turned and fled for the gate on the opposite side of the
+field.
+
+For a second Bindle tore his gaze from the drama before him. He caught
+sight of several inches of white leg above a pair of elastic-sided
+boots, out of which dangled black and orange tabs.
+
+"Help, Joseph, help!" Mr. Hearty screamed in his terror and, a second
+later, he crashed against the gate on which Bindle had climbed ready to
+haul him over.
+
+Seizing his brother-in-law by the collar and a mercifully slack pair of
+trousers, he gave him a mighty heave. A moment later, the two fell to
+the ground; but on the right side of the gate. As they did so, the bull
+crashed his head against it.
+
+The whole structure shivered. For a moment Bindle gave himself up for
+lost; but, fortunately, the posts held. The enraged animal could do
+nothing more than thrust its muzzle between the bars of the gate and
+snort its fury.
+
+The foaming mouth and evil-looking blood-shot eyes caused Bindle to
+scramble hastily to his feet.
+
+"Oh God! I am a miserable sinner," wailed Mr. Hearty; "but spare me that
+I may repent." Then he fell to moaning, whilst Bindle caught a vision of
+Mrs. Bindle disappearing over the further gate with a startling exposure
+of white stocking.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "Ain't it funny 'ow religion gets into
+the legs when there's a bull about? Bit of a slump in 'arps, if you was
+to ask me!"
+
+For some seconds he stood gazing down on the grovelling form of Mr.
+Hearty, an anxious eye on the bull which, with angry snorts, was
+battering the gate in a manner that caused him some concern.
+
+"Look 'ere, 'Earty, you'd better nip orf," he said at length, bringing
+his boot gently into contact with a prominent portion of the
+greengrocer's prostrate form. Mr. Hearty merely groaned and muttered
+appeals to the Almighty to save him.
+
+"It ain't no use a-kickin' up all that row," Bindle continued. "This
+'ere bit o' beef seems to 'ave taken a fancy to you, 'Earty, an' that
+there gate ain't none too strong, neither. 'Ere, steady Kayser," he
+admonished, as the bull made a vicious dash with its head against the
+gate.
+
+Mr. Hearty sat up and gave a wild look about him. At the sight of the
+blood-shot eyes of the enraged animal he scrambled to his feet.
+
+"Now you make a bolt for that there stile," said Bindle, jerking his
+thumb in the direction where Mrs. Bindle had just disappeared, "and
+you'll find Mrs. B. somewhere on the other side."
+
+With another apprehensive glance at the bull, Mr. Hearty turned and made
+towards the stile. His pace was strangely suggestive of a man cheating
+in a walking-race.
+
+The sight of his quarry escaping seemed still further to enrage the
+bull. With a terrifying roar it dashed furiously at the gate.
+
+The sound of the roar lent wings to the feet of the flying Mr. Hearty.
+Throwing aside all pretence, he made precipitately towards the stile,
+beyond which lay safety. For a few seconds, Bindle stood watching the
+flying figure of his brother-in-law. Then he turned off to the right,
+along the hedge dividing the meadow from the field occupied by the bull.
+
+"Well, 'ere's victory or Westminster Abbey," he muttered as he crept
+through a hole in the hawthorn, hoping that the bull would not observe
+him. His object was to warn the farmer of the animal's escape.
+
+Half an hour later, he climbed the stile over which Mrs. Bindle had
+disappeared; but there was no sign either of her or of Mr. Hearty.
+
+It was not until he reached the Summer-Camp that he found them seated
+outside the Bindles' tent. Mr. Hearty, looking pasty of feature, was
+endeavouring to convey to his blanched lips a cup of tea that Mrs.
+Bindle had just handed to him; but the trembling of his hand caused it
+to slop over the side of the cup on to his trousers.
+
+"'Ullo, 'ere we are again," cried Bindle cheerily.
+
+"I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself," cried Mrs. Bindle.
+
+Bindle stared at her with a puzzled expression. He looked at Mr. Hearty,
+then back again at Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Leaving Mr. Hearty and me like that. We might have been killed." Her
+voice shook.
+
+"That would 'ave been a short cut to 'arps an' wings."
+
+"I'm ashamed of you, that I am," she continued, while Mr. Hearty turned
+upon his brother-in-law a pair of mildly reproachful eyes.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," muttered Bindle as he walked away. "If them two
+ain't IT. _Me_ a-leavin' _them_. If that ain't a juicy bit."
+
+Mr. Hearty was only half-way through his second cup of tea when the
+Bishop of Fulham, followed by several of the summer-campers, appeared
+and walked briskly towards them.
+
+"Where's that husband of yours, Mrs. Bindle?" he enquired, as if he
+suspected Bindle of hiding from him.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, sir," she cried, rising, whilst Mr. Hearty, in
+following suit, stepped upon the tails of his coat and slopped the rest
+of the tea over his trousers.
+
+"Ah," said the bishop. "I must find him. He's a fine fellow, crossing
+the field behind that bull to warn Mr. Timkins. If the beast had
+happened to get into the camp, it would have been the very--very
+disastrous," he corrected himself, and with a nod he passed on followed
+by the other campers.
+
+"That's just like Bindle," she complained, "not saying a word, and
+making me ridiculous before the bishop. He's always treating me like
+that," and there was a whimper in her voice.
+
+"It's--it's very unfortunate," said Mr. Hearty nervously.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hearty," she said. "It's little enough sympathy I get."
+
+
+II
+
+It was not until nearly four o'clock that Bindle re-appeared with the
+intimation that he was ready to conduct Mr. Hearty to call upon Farmer
+Timkins with regard to the strawberries, the purchase of which had been
+the object of Mr. Hearty's visit.
+
+"Won't you come, too, Elizabeth?" enquired Mr. Hearty, turning to Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hearty, I should like to," she replied, tightening her
+bonnet strings as if in anticipation of further violent movement.
+
+Mr. Hearty gave the invitation more as a precaution against Bindle's
+high-spirits, than from a desire for his sister-in-law's company.
+
+"'Ere, not that way," cried Bindle, as they were making for the gate
+leading to the road.
+
+Mr. Hearty looked hesitatingly at Mrs. Bindle, who, however, settled the
+question by marching resolutely towards the gate.
+
+"But it'll take a quarter of an hour that way," Bindle protested.
+
+"If you think I'm going across any more fields with wild bulls, Bindle,
+you're mistaken," she announced with decision. "You've nearly killed Mr.
+Hearty once to-day. Let that be enough."
+
+With a feeling of thankfulness Mr. Hearty followed.
+
+"But that little bit o' beef is tied up with a ring through 'is
+bloomin' nose. I been an' 'ad a look at 'im."
+
+"Ring or no ring," she snapped, "I'll have you know that I'm not going
+across any more fields. It's a mercy we're either of us alive."
+
+Bindle knew that he was not the other one referred to, and he
+reluctantly followed, grumbling about long distances and various veins.
+
+Although upon the high-road, both Mrs. Bindle and Mr. Hearty were what
+Bindle regarded as "a bit jumpy."
+
+From time to time they looked about them with obvious apprehension, as
+if anticipating that from every point of the compass a bull was
+preparing to charge down upon them.
+
+They paused at the main-entrance to the farm, allowing Bindle to lead
+the way.
+
+Half-way towards the house, their nostrils were assailed by a
+devastating smell; Mr. Hearty held his breath, whilst Mrs. Bindle
+produced a handkerchief, wiped her lips and then held it to her nose.
+She had always been given to understand that the only antidote for a bad
+smell was to spit; but she was too refined to act up to the dictum
+without the aid of her handkerchief.
+
+"Pigs!" remarked Bindle, raising his head and sniffing with the air of a
+connoisseur.
+
+"Extremely insanitary," murmured Mr. Hearty. "You did say the--er bull
+was tied up, Joseph?" he enquired.
+
+"Well, 'e was when I see 'im," said Bindle, "but of course it wouldn't
+take long for 'im to undo 'imself."
+
+Mr. Hearty glanced about him anxiously.
+
+In front of the house the party paused. Nowhere was anyone to be seen.
+An old cart with its shafts pointing heavenward stood on the borders of
+a duck pond, green with slime.
+
+The place was muddy and unclean, and Mrs. Bindle, with a look of
+disgust, drew up her skirts almost to the tops of her elastic-sided
+boots.
+
+Bindle looked about him with interest. A hen appeared round the corner
+of the house, gazed at the newcomers for a few seconds, her head on one
+side, then disappeared from whence she had come.
+
+Ducks stood on their heads in the water, or quacked comfortably as they
+swam about, apparently either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that
+there were callers.
+
+From somewhere in the distance could be heard the sound of a horse
+stamping in its stall.
+
+At the end of five minutes an old man appeared carrying a pail. At the
+sight of strangers, he stopped dead, his slobbering lips gaping in
+surprise.
+
+"Can I see Mr. Timkins?" enquired Mr. Hearty, in refined but woolly
+tones.
+
+"Farmer be over there wi' Bessie. I tell un she'll foal' fore night; but
+'e will 'ave it she won't. 'E'll see. 'E will," he added with the air of
+a fatalist.
+
+Mr. Hearty turned aside and became interested in the ducks, whilst Mrs.
+Bindle flushed a deep vermilion. Bindle said nothing; but watched with
+enjoyment the confusion of the others.
+
+The man stared at them, puzzled to account for their conduct.
+
+"Where did you say Mr. Timkins was to be found?" enquired Mr. Hearty.
+
+"I just tell ee, in the stable wi' Bessie. 'E says she won't foal; but I
+know she will. Why she----"
+
+Mr. Hearty did not wait for further information; but turned and made for
+what, from the motion of the man's head, he took to be the stable.
+
+The others followed.
+
+"No, not there," yelled the man, as if he were addressing someone in the
+next field. "Turn round to left o' that there muck 'eap."
+
+A convulsive shudder passed over Mr. Hearty's frame. He was appalled at
+the coarseness engendered by an agricultural existence. He hurried on so
+that he should not have to meet Mrs. Bindle's eye.
+
+At that moment Farmer Timkins was seen approaching. He was a short,
+red-faced man in a bob-tailed coat with large flapped-pockets,
+riding-breeches and gaiters. In his hand he carried a crop which, at the
+sight of Mrs. Bindle, he raised to his hat in salutation.
+
+"Mornin'."
+
+"Good afternoon," said Mr. Hearty genteelly.
+
+The farmer fixed his eyes upon Mr. Hearty's emaciated sallowness, with
+all the superiority of one who knows that he is a fine figure of a man.
+
+"It was you that upset Oscar, wasn't it?" There was more accusation than
+welcome in his tone.
+
+"Upset Oscar?" enquired Mr. Hearty, nervously looking from the farmer
+to Mrs. Bindle, then back again to the farmer.
+
+"Yes, my bull," explained Mr. Timkins.
+
+"It was Oscar wot nearly upset pore old 'Earty," grinned Bindle.
+
+"A savage beast like that ought to be shot," cried Mrs. Bindle, gazing
+squarely at the farmer. "It nearly killed----"
+
+"Ought to be shot!" repeated the farmer, a dull flush rising to his
+face. "Shoot Oscar! Are you mad, ma'am?" he demanded, making an obvious
+effort to restrain his anger.
+
+"Don't you dare to insult me," she cried. "You set that savage brute on
+to Mr. Hearty and it nearly killed him. I shall report you to the
+bishop--and--and--to the police," she added as an after-thought. "You
+ought to be prosecuted."
+
+Mrs. Bindle's lips had disappeared into a grey line, her face was very
+white, particularly at the corners of the mouth. For nearly two hours
+she had restrained herself. Now that she was face to face with the owner
+of the bull that had nearly plunged her into mourning, her anger burst
+forth.
+
+The farmer looked from one to the other in bewilderment.
+
+"Report me to the police," he repeated dully. "What----"
+
+"Yes, and I will too," cried Mrs. Bindle, interpreting the farmer's
+strangeness of manner as indicative of fear. "Mad bulls are always
+shot."
+
+The farmer focussed his gaze upon Mrs. Bindle, as if she belonged to a
+new species. His anger had vanished. He was overcome by surprise that
+anyone should be so ignorant of bulls and their ways as to believe Oscar
+mad.
+
+"Why, ma'am, Oscar's no more mad than you or me. He's just a bit fresh.
+Most times he's as gentle as a lamb."
+
+"Don't talk to me about lambs," cried Mrs. Bindle, now thoroughly
+roused. "With my own eyes I saw it chasing Mr. Hearty across the field.
+It's a wonder he wasn't killed. I shall insist upon the animal being
+destroyed."
+
+The farmer turned to Bindle, as if for an explanation of such strange
+views upon bulls in general and Oscar in particular.
+
+"Oscar's all right, Lizzie," said Bindle pacifically. "'E only wanted to
+play tag with 'Earty."
+
+"You be quiet!" cried Mrs. Bindle. She felt that she already had the
+enemy well beaten and in terror of prosecution.
+
+"I suppose," she continued, turning once more to Mr. Timkins, "you want
+to hide the fact that you're keeping a mad bull until you can turn it
+into beef and send it to market; but----"
+
+"Turn Oscar into beef!" roared the farmer. "Why, God dang my boots,
+ma'am, you're crazy! I wouldn't sell Oscar for a thousand pounds."
+
+"I thought so," said Mrs. Bindle, looking across at Mr. Hearty, who was
+feeling intensely uncomfortable, "and people are to be chased about the
+country and murdered just because you won't----"
+
+"But dang it, ma'am! there isn't a bull like Oscar for twenty miles
+round. Last year I had--let me see, how many calves----"
+
+"Don't be disgusting," she cried, whilst Mr. Hearty turned his head
+aside, and coughed modestly into his right hand.
+
+Mr. Timkins gazed from one to the other in sheer amazement, whilst
+Bindle, who had so manoeuvred as to place himself behind Mrs. Bindle,
+caught the farmer's eye and tapped his forehead significantly.
+
+The simple action seemed to have a magical effect upon Mr. Timkins. His
+anger disappeared and his customary bluff geniality returned.
+
+He acknowledged Bindle's signal with a wink, then he turned to Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"You see, ma'am, this is all my land, and I let the bishop have his
+camp----"
+
+"That doesn't excuse you for keeping a mad bull," was the uncompromising
+retort. The life of her hero had been endangered, and Mrs. Bindle was
+not to be placated by words.
+
+"But Oscar ain't mad," protested the farmer, taking off his hat and
+mopping his forehead with a large coloured-handkerchief he had drawn
+from his tail-pocket. "I tell you he's no more mad than what I am."
+
+"And I tell you he is," she retorted, with all the assurance of one
+thoroughly versed in the ways of bulls.
+
+"You see, it's like this here, mum," he said soothingly, intent upon
+placating one who was not "quite all there," as he would have expressed
+it. "It's all through the wind gettin' round to the sou'west. If it
+hadn't been for that----"
+
+"Don't talk to me about such rubbish," she interrupted scornfully. "I
+wonder you don't say it's because there's a new moon. I'm not a fool,
+although I haven't lived all my life on a farm."
+
+The farmer looked about him helplessly. Then he made another effort.
+
+"You see, ma'am, when the wind's in the sou'west, Oscar gets a whiff o'
+them cows in the home----"
+
+"How dare you!" The colour of Mrs. Bindle's cheeks transcended anything
+that Bindle had ever seen. "How dare you speak to me! How--you
+coarse--you--you disgusting beast!"
+
+At the sight of Mrs. Bindle's blazing eyes and heaving chest, the farmer
+involuntarily retreated a step.
+
+Several times he blinked his eyes in rapid succession.
+
+Mr. Hearty turned and concentrated his gaze upon what the old man had
+described as "that there muck 'eap."
+
+"Bindle!" cried Mrs. Bindle. "Will you stand by and let that man insult
+me? He's a coarse, low----" Her voice shook with suppressed passion. Mr.
+Hearty drew out his handkerchief and coughed into it.
+
+For several seconds Mrs. Bindle stood glaring at the farmer, then, with
+a sudden movement, she turned and walked away with short, jerky steps of
+indignation.
+
+Mr. Hearty continued to gaze at the muck heap, whilst the farmer watched
+the retreating form of Mrs. Bindle, as if she had been a double-headed
+calf, or a three-legged duck.
+
+When she had disappeared from sight round the corner of the house, he
+once more mopped his forehead with the coloured-handkerchief, then,
+thrusting it into his pocket, he resumed his hat with the air of a man
+who has escaped from some deadly peril.
+
+"It's all that there Jim," he muttered. "I told him to look out for the
+wind and move them cows; but will he? Not if he knows it, dang him."
+
+"Don't you take it to 'eart," said Bindle cheerily. "It ain't no good to
+start back-chat with my missis."
+
+"But she said Oscar ought to be shot," grumbled the farmer. "Shoot
+Oscar!" he muttered to himself.
+
+"You see, it's like this 'ere, religion's a funny thing. When it gets
+'old of you, it either makes you mild, like 'Earty 'ere, or it makes you
+as 'ot as onions, like my missis. She don't mean no 'arm; but when you
+gone 'ead first over a stile, an' your sort o' shy about yer legs, it
+don't make you feel you wants to give yer sugar ticket to the bull wot
+did it."
+
+"The--the strawberries, Joseph," Mr. Hearty broke in upon the
+conversation, addressing Bindle rather than the farmer, of whom he stood
+in some awe.
+
+"Ah! dang it, o' course, them strawberries," cried the farmer, who had
+been advised by Patrol-leader Smithers that a potential customer would
+call. "Come along this way," and he led the way to a large barn, still
+mumbling under his breath.
+
+"This way," he cried again, as he entered and pointed to where stood
+row upon row of baskets full of strawberries, heavily scenting the air.
+Hearty walked across the barn, picked up a specimen of the fruit and bit
+it.
+
+"What price are you asking for them?" he enquired.
+
+"Fourpence," was the retort.
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mr. Hearty with all the instincts of the chafferer,
+"that I could not pay more than----"
+
+"Then go to hell!" roared the farmer. "You get off my farm or--or I'll
+let Oscar loose," he added with inspiration.
+
+For the last quarter of an hour he had restrained himself with
+difficulty; but Mr. Hearty's bargaining instinct had been the spark that
+had ignited the volcano of his wrath.
+
+Mr. Hearty started back violently; stumbled against a large stone and
+sat down with a suddenness that caused his teeth to rattle.
+
+"Off you go!" yelled the farmer, purple with rage. "Here Jim," he
+shouted; but Mr. Hearty waited for nothing more. Picking himself up, he
+fled blindly, he knew not whither. It sufficed him that it should be
+away from that muscular arm which was gripping a formidable-looking
+crop.
+
+Bindle turned to follow, feeling that his own popularity had been
+submerged in the negative qualities of his wife and brother-in-law; but
+the farmer put out a restraining hand.
+
+"Not you," he said, "you come up to the house. I can give you a mug of
+ale the like of which you haven't tasted for years. I'm all upset, I
+am," he added, as if to excuse his outburst. "I'm not forgettin' that
+it was you that came an' told me about Oscar. He might a-done a
+middlin' bit o' damage." Then, suddenly recollecting the cause of all
+the trouble, he added, "Dang that old Jim! It was them cows what did it.
+Shoot Oscar!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE COMING OF THE WHIRLWIND
+
+
+I
+
+"It's come, mate."
+
+"Go away, we're not up yet," cried the voice of Mrs. Bindle from inside
+the tent.
+
+"It's come, mate," repeated a lugubrious voice, which Bindle recognised
+as that of the tall, despondent man with the stubbly chin.
+
+"Who's come?" demanded Bindle, sitting up and throwing the bedclothes
+from his chest, revealing a washed-out pink flannel night-shirt.
+
+"The blinkin' field-kitchen," came the voice from without. "Comin' to
+'ave a look at it?"
+
+"Righto, ole sport. I'll be out in two ticks."
+
+"I won't have that man coming up to the tent when--when we're not up,"
+said Mrs. Bindle angrily.
+
+"It's all right, Lizzie," reassured Bindle, "'e can't see through--an'
+'e ain't that sort o' cove neither," he added.
+
+Mrs. Bindle murmured an angry retort.
+
+Five minutes later Bindle, with trailing braces, left the tent and
+joined the group of men and children gazing at a battered object that
+was strangely reminiscent of Stevenson's first steam-engine.
+
+"That's it," said the man with the stubbly chin, whose name was Barnes,
+known to his intimates as "'Arry," turning to greet Bindle and jerking a
+dirt-grimed thumb in the direction of the travelling field-kitchen.
+
+Dubious heads were shaken. Many of the men had already had practical
+experience of the temperament possessed by an army field-kitchen.
+
+"At Givenchy I see one of 'em cut in 'alf by a 'Crump,'" muttered a
+little dark-haired man, with red-rimmed eyes that seemed to blink
+automatically. "It wasn't 'alf a sight, neither," he added.
+
+"Who's goin' to stoke?" demanded Barnes, rubbing his chin affectionately
+with the pad of his right thumb.
+
+"'Im wot's been the wickedest," suggested Bindle.
+
+They were in no mood for lightness, however. None had yet breakfasted,
+and all had suffered the acute inconvenience of camping under the
+supreme direction of a benign but misguided cleric.
+
+"Wot the 'ell I come 'ere for, I don't know," said a man with a moist,
+dirty face. "Might a gone to Southend with my brother-in-law, I might,"
+he added reminiscently.
+
+"You wasn't 'alf a mug, was you?" remarked a wiry little man in a
+singlet and khaki trousers.
+
+"You're right there, mate," was the response. "Blinkin' barmy I must a'
+been."
+
+"I was goin' to Yarmouth," confided a third, "only my missis got this
+ruddy camp on the streamin' brain. Jawed about it till I was sick and
+give in for peace an' quietness. Now, look at me."
+
+"It's all the ruddy Government, a-startin' these 'ere stutterin' camps,"
+complained a red-headed man with the face of a Bolshevist.
+
+"They 'as races at Yarmouth, too," grumbled the previous speaker.
+
+"Not till September," put in another.
+
+"August," said the first speaker aggressively, and the two proceeded
+fiercely to discuss the date of the Yarmouth Races.
+
+When the argument had gone as far as it could without blows, and had
+quieted all other conversation, Bindle slipped away from the group and
+returned to the tent to find Mrs. Bindle busy preparing breakfast.
+
+He smacked his lips with the consciousness that of all the campers he
+was the best fed.
+
+"Gettin' a move on," he cried cheerily, and once more he smacked his
+lips.
+
+"Pity you can't do something to help," she retorted, "instead of loafing
+about with that pack of lazy scamps."
+
+Bindle retired to the interior of the tent and proceeded with his
+toilet.
+
+"That's right, take no notice when I speak to you," she snapped.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" he groaned. "It's scratch all night an' scrap all day.
+It's an 'oliday all right."
+
+He strove to think of something tactful to say; but at the moment
+nothing seemed to suggest itself, and Mrs. Bindle viciously broke three
+eggs into the frying-pan in which bacon was already sizzling, like an
+energetic wireless-plant.
+
+The savoury smell of the frying eggs and bacon reached Bindle inside the
+tent, inspiring him with feelings of benevolence and good-will.
+
+"I'm sorry, Lizzie," he said contritely, "but I didn't 'ear you."
+
+"You heard well enough what I said," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder, as she
+broke a fourth egg into the pan.
+
+"The kitchen's come," he said pleasantly.
+
+"Oh, has it?" Mrs. Bindle did not raise her eyes from the frying-pan she
+was holding over the scout-fire.
+
+For a minute or two Bindle preserved silence, wondering what topic he
+possessed that would soothe her obvious irritation.
+
+"They say the big tent's down at the station," he remarked, repeating a
+rumour he had heard when engaged in examining the field-kitchen.
+
+Mrs. Bindle vouchsafed no reply.
+
+"Did you sleep well, Lizzie?" he enquired.
+
+"Sleep!" she repeated scornfully. "How was I to sleep on rough straw
+like that. I ache all over."
+
+He saw that he had made a false move in introducing the subject of
+sleep.
+
+"The milk hasn't come," she announced presently with the air of one
+making a statement she knew would be unpopular. Bindle hated tea
+without milk.
+
+"You don't say so," he remarked. "I must 'ave a word with Daisy. She
+didn't oughter be puttin' on 'er bloomin' frills."
+
+"The paraffin's got into the sugar," was the next bombshell.
+
+"Well, well," said Bindle. "I suppose you can't 'ave everythink as you
+would like it."
+
+"Another time, perhaps you'll get up yourself and help with the meals."
+
+"I ain't much at them sort o' things," he replied, conscious that Mrs.
+Bindle's anger was rising.
+
+"You leave me to do everything, as if I was your slave instead of your
+wife."
+
+Bindle remained silent. He realized that there were times when it was
+better to bow to the storm.
+
+"Ain't it done yet?" he enquired, looking anxiously at the frying-pan.
+
+"That's all you care about, your stomach," she cried, her voice rising
+hysterically. "So long as you've got plenty to eat, nothing else
+matters. I wonder I stand it. I--I----"
+
+Bindle's eyes were still fixed anxiously upon the frying-pan, which, in
+her excitement, Mrs. Bindle was moving from side to side of the fire.
+
+"Look out!" he cried, "you'll upset it, an' I'm as 'ungry as an 'awk."
+
+Suddenly the light of madness sprang into her eyes.
+
+"Oh! you are, are you? Well, get somebody else to cook your meals," and
+with that she inverted the frying-pan, tipping the contents into the
+fire. As Bindle sprang up from the box on which he had been sitting, she
+rubbed the frying-pan into the ashes, making a hideous mess of the
+burning-wood, eggs and bacon.
+
+With a scream that was half a sob, she fled to the shelter of the tent,
+leaving Bindle to gaze down upon the wreck of what had been intended for
+his breakfast.
+
+Picking up a stick, charred at one end, he began to rake among the
+embers in the vague hope of being able to disinter from the wreck
+something that was eatable; but Mrs. Bindle's action in rubbing the
+frying-pan into the ashes had removed from the contents all semblance of
+food. With a sigh he rose to his feet to find the bishop gazing down at
+him.
+
+"Had a mishap?" he asked pleasantly.
+
+"You've 'it it, sir," grinned Bindle. "Twenty years ago," he added in a
+whisper.
+
+"Twenty years ago!" murmured the bishop, a puzzled expression on his
+face. "What was twenty years ago?"
+
+"The little mis'ap wot you was talkin' about, sir," explained Bindle,
+still in a whisper. "I married Mrs. B. then, an' she gets a bit jumpy
+now and again."
+
+"I see," whispered the bishop, "she upset the breakfast."
+
+"Well, sir, you can put it that way; but personally myself, I think it
+was the breakfast wot upset 'er."
+
+"And you've got nothing to eat?"
+
+"Not even a tin to lick out, sir."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" cried the bishop, genuinely distressed, and then,
+suddenly catching sight of Barnes's lugubrious form appearing from
+behind a neighbouring tent, he hailed him.
+
+Barnes approached with all the deliberation and unconcern of a
+pronounced fatalist.
+
+"Our friend here has had a mishap," said the bishop, indicating the
+fire. "Will you go round to my tent and get some eggs and bacon. Hurry
+up, there's a good fellow."
+
+Barnes turned on a deliberate heel, whilst Bindle and the bishop set
+themselves to the reconstruction of the scout-fire.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Bindle peeped out of the tent, she
+saw the bishop and Bindle engaged in frying eggs and bacon; whilst
+Barnes stood gazing down at them with impassive pessimism.
+
+Rising to stretch his cramped legs, the bishop caught sight of Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Bindle. I hope your headache is better. Mr. Bindle
+has been telling me that he has had a mishap with your breakfast, so I'm
+helping him to cook it. I hope you won't mind if I join you in eating
+it."
+
+"Now that's wot I call tack," muttered Bindle under his breath, "but my!
+ain't 'e a prize liar, 'im a parson too."
+
+Mrs. Bindle came forward, an expression on her face that was generally
+kept for the Rev. Mr. MacFie, of the Alton Road Chapel.
+
+"It's very kind of you, sir. I'm sorry Bindle let you help with the
+cooking."
+
+"But I'm going to help with the eating," cried the bishop gaily.
+
+"But it's not fit work for a----"
+
+"I know what you're going to say," said the bishop, "and I don't want
+you to say it. Here we are all friends, helping one another, and giving
+a meal when the hungry appears. For this morning I'm going to fill the
+rôle of the hungry. I wonder if you'll make the tea, Mrs. Bindle, Mr.
+Bindle tells me your tea is wonderful."
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" murmured Bindle, casting up his eyes.
+
+With what was almost a smile, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to do the bishop's
+bidding.
+
+During the meal Bindle was silent, leaving the conversation to Mrs.
+Bindle and the bishop. By the time he had finished his third cup of tea,
+Mrs. Bindle was almost gay.
+
+The bishop talked household-management, touched on religion and
+Christian charity, slid off again to summer-camps, thence on to
+marriage, babies and the hundred and one other things dear to a woman's
+heart.
+
+When he finally rose to go, Bindle saw in Mrs. Bindle's eyes a smile
+that almost reached her lips.
+
+"I hope that if ever you honour us again, sir, you will let me know----"
+
+"No, Mrs. Bindle, it's the unexpected that delights me, and I'm going to
+be selfish. Thank you for your hospitality and our pleasant chat," and
+with that he was gone.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle as he gazed after the figure of the
+retreating bishop, "an' me always thinkin' that you 'ad to 'ave an 'ymn
+an' a tin o' salmon to make love to Mrs. B."
+
+"And now, I suppose, you'll go off and leave me to do all the
+washing-up. Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth when the bishop was here.
+You couldn't say a word before him," she snapped, and she proceeded to
+gather together the dishes.
+
+"No," muttered Bindle as he fetched some sticks for the fire. "'E can
+talk tack all right; but when you wants it to last, it's better to 'ave
+a tin o' salmon to fall back on."
+
+That morning Daisy had a serious rival in the field-kitchen, which like
+her was an unknown quantity, capable alike of ministering to the
+happiness of all, or of withholding that which was expected of it.
+
+It was soon obvious to the bishop that the field-kitchen was going to
+prove as great a source of anxiety as Daisy. No one manifested any
+marked inclination to act as stoker. Apart from this, the bishop had
+entirely forgotten the important item of fuel, having omitted to order
+either coal or coke. In addition there was a marked suspicion, on the
+part of the wives, of what they regarded as a new-fangled way of cooking
+a meal. Many of them had already heard of army field-kitchens from their
+husbands, and were filled with foreboding.
+
+It took all the bishop's tact and enthusiasm to modify their obvious
+antagonism.
+
+"I ain't a-goin' to trust anythink o' mine in a rusty old thing like
+that," said a fat woman with a grimy skin and scanty hair.
+
+"Same 'ere, they didn't ought to 'ave let us come down without making
+proper pervision," complained a second, seizing an opportunity when the
+bishop's head was in the stoke-hole to utter the heresy.
+
+"Bless me!" he said, withdrawing his head, unconscious that there was a
+black smudge on the right episcopal cheek. "It will take a dreadful lot
+of fuel. Now, who will volunteer to stoke?" turning his most persuasive
+smile upon the group of men, who had been keenly interested in his
+examination of the contrivance.
+
+The men shuffled their feet, looked at one another, as if each expected
+to find in another the spirit of sacrifice lacking in himself.
+
+Their disinclination was so marked that the bishop's face fell, until he
+suddenly caught sight of Bindle approaching.
+
+"Ah!" he cried. "Here's the man I want. Now, Bindle," he called out,
+"you saved us from the bull, how would you like to become stoker?"
+
+"Surely I ain't as bad as all that, sir," grinned Bindle.
+
+"I'm not speaking professionally," laughed the bishop, who had already
+ingratiated himself with the men because he did not "talk like a ruddy
+parson." "I want somebody to take charge of this field-kitchen," he
+continued. "I'd do it myself, only I've got such a lot of other things
+to see to. I'll borrow some coal from Mr. Timkins."
+
+Bindle gazed dubiously at the unattractive mass of iron, dabbed with the
+weather-worn greens and browns of camouflage and war.
+
+"It's quite simple," said the bishop. "You light the fire here, that's
+the oven, and you boil things here, and--we shall soon get it going."
+
+"I don't mind stokin', sir," said Bindle at length; "but I ain't a-goin'
+to take charge of 'oo's dinner's wot. If there's goin' to be any
+scrappin' with the ladies, well, I ain't in it."
+
+Finally it was arranged that Bindle should start the fire and get the
+field-kitchen into working order, and that the putting-in the oven and
+taking-out again of the various dishes should be left to the discretion
+of the campers themselves, who were to be responsible for the length of
+time required to cook their own particular meals.
+
+With astonishing energy, the bishop set the children to collect wood,
+and soon Bindle, throwing himself into the work with enthusiasm, had the
+fire well alight. There had arrived from the farm a good supply of coal
+and coke.
+
+"You ain't 'alf 'it it unlucky, mate," said the man with the bristly
+chin. "'E ought to 'ave 'ired a cook," he added. "We come 'ere to enjoy
+ourselves, not to be blinkin' stokers. That's like them ruddy parsons,"
+he added, "always wantin' somethin' for nuffin."
+
+"'Ere, come along, cheerful," cried Bindle, "give me a 'and with this
+coke," and, a minute later, the lugubrious Barnes found himself
+sweating like a horse, and shovelling fuel into the kitchen's voracious
+maw.
+
+"That's not the way!"
+
+The man straightened his back and, with one hand on the spade, gazed at
+Mrs. Bindle, who had approached unobserved. With the grubby thumb of his
+other hand he rubbed his chin, giving to his unprepossessing features a
+lopsided appearance.
+
+"Wot ain't the way, missis?" he asked with the air of one quite prepared
+to listen to reason.
+
+"The coke should be damped," was the response, "and you're putting in
+too much."
+
+"But we want it to burn up," he protested.
+
+Mrs. Bindle ostentatiously turned upon him a narrow back.
+
+"_You_ ought to know better, at least, Bindle," she snapped, and
+proceeded to give him instruction in the art of encouraging a fire.
+
+"You'd better take some out," she said.
+
+"'Ere ole sport," cried Bindle, "give us----" he stopped suddenly. His
+assistant had disappeared.
+
+"You mustn't let anyone put anything in until the oven's hot," continued
+Mrs. Bindle, "and you mustn't open the door too often. You'd better fix
+a time when they can bring the food, say eleven o'clock."
+
+"Early doors threepence extra?" queried Bindle.
+
+"We're going to have sausage-toad-in-the-hole, and mind you don't burn
+it."
+
+"I'll watch it as if it was my own cheeild," vowed Bindle.
+
+"If the bishop knew you as I know you, he wouldn't have trusted you
+with this," said Mrs. Bindle, as she walked away with indrawn lips and
+head in the air, stepping with the self-consciousness of a bantam that
+feels its spurs.
+
+"Blowed if she don't think I volunteered for the bloomin' job," he
+muttered, as he ceased extracting pieces of coke from the furnace.
+"Well, if their dinner ain't done it's their fault, an' if it's overdone
+it ain't mine," and with that he drew his pipe from his pocket and
+filled it.
+
+"No luck," he cried, as a grey-haired old woman with the dirt of other
+years on her face hobbled up with a pie-dish. "Doors ain't open yet."
+
+"But it's an onion pie," grumbled the old dame, "and onions takes a lot
+o' cookin'."
+
+"Can't 'elp it," grinned Bindle. "Doors ain't open till eleven."
+
+"But----" began the woman.
+
+"Nothin', doin' mother," said the obstinate Bindle. "You see this 'ere
+is a religious kitchen. It's a different sort from an ordinary
+blasphemious kitchen."
+
+On the stroke of eleven Mrs. Bindle appeared with a large brown
+pie-dish, the sight of which made Bindle's mouth water.
+
+"Now then," he cried, "line up for the bakin'-queue. Shillin' a 'ead an'
+all bad nuts changed. Oh! no, you don't," he cried, as one woman
+proffered a basin. "I'm stoker, not cook. You shoves 'em in yourself,
+an' you fetches 'em when you wants 'em. If there's any scrappin' to be
+done, I'll be umpire."
+
+One by one the dishes were inserted in the oven, and one by one their
+owners retired, a feeling of greater confidence in their hearts now that
+they could prepare a proper dinner. The men went off to get a drink, and
+soon Bindle was alone.
+
+During the first half-hour Mrs. Bindle paid three separate visits to the
+field-kitchen. To her it was a new and puzzling contrivance, and she had
+no means of gauging the heat of the oven. She regarded it distrustfully
+and, on the occasion of the second visit, gave a special word of warning
+to Bindle.
+
+At 11.40 Barnes returned with a large black bottle, which he held out to
+Bindle with an invitation to "'ave a drink."
+
+Bindle removed the cork and put the bottle to his lips, and his Adam's
+apple bobbed up and down joyously.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, as he at length lowered the bottle and his head at the
+same time. "That's the stuff to give 'em," and reluctantly he handed
+back the bottle to its owner, who hastily withdrew at the sight of Mrs.
+Bindle approaching.
+
+When she had taken her departure, Bindle began to feel drowsy. The sun
+was hot, the air was still, and the world was very good to live in.
+Still, there was the field-kitchen to be looked after.
+
+For some time he struggled against the call of sleep; but do what he
+would, his head continued to nod, and his eyelids seemed weighted with
+lead.
+
+Suddenly he had an inspiration. If he stoked-up the field-kitchen, it
+would look after itself, and he could have just the "forty winks" his
+nature craved.
+
+With feverish energy he set to work with the shovel, treating the two
+stacks of coal and coke with entire impartiality. Then, when he had
+filled the furnace, he closed the door with the air of the Roman sentry
+relieving himself of responsibility by setting a burglar-alarm. Getting
+well out of the radius of the heat caused by the furnace, he composed
+himself to slumber behind the heap of coke.
+
+Suddenly he was aroused from a dream in which he stood on the deck of a
+wrecked steamer, surrounded by steam which was escaping with vicious
+hisses from the damaged boilers.
+
+He sat up and looked about him. The air seemed white with vapour, in and
+out of which two figures could be seen moving. He struggled to his feet
+and looked about him.
+
+A few yards away he saw Mrs. Bindle engaged in throwing water at the
+field-kitchen, and then dashing back quickly to escape the smother of
+steam that resulted. The bishop, with a bucket and a pink-and-blue jug,
+was dashing water on to the monster's back.
+
+Bindle gazed at the scene in astonishment, then, making a detour, he
+approached from the opposite side, to see what it was that had produced
+the crisis. Just at that moment, the bishop decided that the pail had
+been sufficiently lightened by the use of the pink-and-blue jug to
+enable him to lift it.
+
+A moment later Bindle was the centre of a cascade of water and a mantle
+of spray.
+
+"'Ere! wot the 'ell?" he bawled.
+
+The bishop dodged round to the other side and apologised profusely,
+explaining how Mrs. Bindle had discovered that the field-kitchen had
+become overheated and that between them they were trying to lower its
+temperature.
+
+"Yes; but I ain't over'eated," protested Bindle.
+
+"You put too much coal in, Bindle; the place would have been red-hot in
+half an hour."
+
+"Well; but look at all them dinners that----"
+
+"Don't talk to him, my lord," said Mrs. Bindle, who from a fellow-camper
+had learned how a bishop should be addressed. "He's done it on purpose."
+
+"No, no, Mrs. Bindle," said the bishop genially. "I'm sure he didn't
+mean to do it. It's really my fault."
+
+And Mrs. Bindle left it at that.
+
+From that point, however, she took charge of the operations, the bishop
+and Bindle working under her direction. The news that the field-kitchen
+was on fire, conveyed to their parents by the children, had brought up
+the campers in full-force and at the double.
+
+There had been a rush for the oven; but Mrs. Bindle soon showed that she
+had the situation well in hand, and the sight of the bishop doing her
+bidding had a reassuring effect.
+
+Under her supervision, each dish and basin was withdrawn, and first aid
+administered to such as required it. Those that were burnt, were tended
+with a skill and expedition that commanded the admiration of every
+housewife present. They were content to leave matters in hands that
+they recognised were more capable than their own.
+
+When the salvage work was ended, and the dishes and basins replaced in
+an oven that had been reduced to a suitable temperature, the bishop
+mopped his brow, whilst Mrs. Bindle stood back and gazed at the
+field-kitchen as St. George might have regarded the conquered dragon.
+
+Her face was flushed, and her hands were grimed; but in her eyes was a
+keen satisfaction. For once in her life she had occupied the centre of
+something larger than a domestic stage.
+
+"My friends," cried the bishop, always ready to say a few words or point
+the moral, "we are all under a very great obligation to our capable
+friend Mrs. Bindle, a veritable Martha among women;" he indicated Mrs.
+Bindle with a motion of what was probably the dirtiest episcopal hand in
+the history of the Church. "She has saved the situation and, what is
+more, she has saved our dinners. Now," he cried boyishly, "I call for
+three cheers for Mrs. Bindle."
+
+And they were given with a heartiness that caused Mrs. Bindle a queer
+sensation at the back of her throat.
+
+The campers flocked round her and found that she whom they had regarded
+as "uppish," could be almost gracious. Anyhow, she had saved their
+dinners.
+
+It was Mrs. Bindle's hour.
+
+"Fancy 'im a-callin' 'er Martha, when 'er name's Lizzie," muttered
+Bindle, as he strolled off. He had taken no very prominent part in the
+proceedings--he was a little ashamed of the part he had played in what
+had proved almost a tragedy.
+
+That day the Tired Workers dined because of Mrs. Bindle, and they knew
+it. Various were the remarks exchanged among the groups collected
+outside the tents.
+
+"She didn't 'alf order the bishop about," remarked to his wife the man
+who should have gone to Yarmouth.
+
+"Any way, if it 'adn't been for 'er you'd 'ave 'ad cinders instead o'
+baked chops and onions for yer dinner," was the rejoinder, as his wife,
+a waspish little woman, rubbed a piece of bread round her plate. "She
+ain't got much to learn about a kitchen stove, I'll say that for 'er,"
+she added, with the air of one who sees virtue in unaccustomed places.
+
+That afternoon when Bindle was lying down inside the tent, endeavouring
+to digest some fifty per cent. more sausage-toad-in-the-hole than he was
+licensed to carry, he was aroused from a doze by the sound of voices
+without.
+
+"We brought 'em for you, missis." It was the man with the stubbly chin
+speaking.
+
+"Must 'ave made you a bit firsty, all that 'eat," remarked another
+voice.
+
+Bindle sat up. Events were becoming interesting. He crept to the opening
+of the tent and slightly pulled aside the flap.
+
+"Best dinner we've 'ad yet." The speaker was the man who had seen a
+field-kitchen dissected at Givenchy. He was just in the line of
+Bindle's vision.
+
+Pulling the flap still further aside, he saw half-a-dozen men standing
+awkwardly before Mrs. Bindle who, with a bottle of Guinness' stout in
+either hand, was actually smiling.
+
+"It's very kind of you," she said. "Thank you very much."
+
+In his astonishment, Bindle dropped the flap, and the picture was
+blotted out.
+
+"Come an' 'ave a look at Daisy," he heard the man with the stubbly chin
+say. It was obviously his conception of terminating an awkward
+interview.
+
+"Good day," he heard a voice mumble, to which Mrs. Bindle replied with
+almost cordiality.
+
+Bindle scrambled back to his mattress, just as Mrs. Bindle pulled aside
+the flap of the tent and entered, a bottle still in either hand. At the
+sight, Bindle became aware of a thirst which until then had slumbered.
+
+"I can do with a drop o' Guinness," he cried cheerily, his eyes upon the
+bottles. "Nice o' them coves to think of us."
+
+"It was me, not you," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder, as she stepped across
+to her mattress.
+
+"But you don't drink beer, Lizzie," he protested. "You're temperance.
+I'll drink 'em for you."
+
+"If you do, I'll kill you, Bindle." And the intensity with which she
+uttered the threat decided him that it would be better to leave the
+brace of Guinness severely alone; but he was sorely puzzled.
+
+
+II
+
+That evening, in the sanded tap-room of The Trowel and Turtle, the male
+summer-campers expressed themselves for the twentieth time
+uncompromisingly upon the subject of bishops and summer-camps. They were
+"fed up to the ruddy neck," and would give not a little to be back in
+London, where it was possible to find a pub "without gettin' a blinkin'
+blister on your stutterin' 'eel."
+
+It was true the field-kitchen had arrived, that they had eaten their
+first decent meal, and there was every reason to believe that the
+marquee was at the station; still they were "sick of the whole streamin'
+business."
+
+To add to their troubles the landlord of The Trowel and Turtle expressed
+grave misgivings as to the weather. The glass was dropping, and there
+was every indication of rain.
+
+"Rain'll jest put the scarlet lid on this blinkin' beano," was the
+opinion expressed by one of the party and endorsed by all, as, with the
+landlord's advice to see that everything was made snug for the night,
+they trooped out of the comfortable tap-room and turned their heads
+towards the Summer-Camp.
+
+At the entrance of the meadow they were met by Patrol-leader Smithers.
+
+"You must slack the ropes of your tents," he announced, "there may be
+rain. Only just slack them a bit; don't overdo it, or they'll come down
+on the top of you if the wind gets up."
+
+"Oh crikey!" moaned a long man with a straggling moustache, as he
+watched Patrol-leader Smithers march briskly down the lane.
+
+For some moments the men gazed at one another in consternation; each
+visualised the desperate state of discomfort that would ensue as the
+result of wind and rain.
+
+"Let's go an' 'ave a look at Daisy," said Bindle inconsequently.
+
+His companions stared at him in surprise. A shrill voice in the distance
+calling "'Enery" seemed to lend to them decision, particularly to 'Enery
+himself. They turned and strolled over to where Daisy was engaged in
+preparing the morrow's milk supply. She had been milked and was content.
+
+"Look 'ere, mates," began Bindle, having assured himself that there were
+no eavesdroppers, "we're all fed up with Summer-Camps for tired
+workers--that so?"
+
+"Up to the blinkin' neck," said a big man with a dirt-grimed skin,
+voicing the opinion of all.
+
+"There ain't no pubs," said a burly man with black whiskers, "no
+pictures, can't put a shillin' on an 'orse, can't do anythink----"
+
+"But watch this ruddy cow," broke in the man with the stubbly chin.
+
+"Well, well, p'raps you're right, only I couldn't 'ave said it 'alf as
+politely," said Bindle, with a grin. "We're all for good ole Fulham
+where a cove can lay the dust. Ain't that so, mates?"
+
+The men expressed their agreement according to the intensity of their
+feelings.
+
+"Well, listen," said Bindle, "an' I'll tell you." They drew nearer and
+listened.
+
+Twenty minutes later, when the voice demanding 'Enery became too
+insistent to be denied, the party broke up, and there was in the eyes of
+all that which spoke of hope.
+
+
+III
+
+That night, as Patrol-leader Smithers had foretold, there arose a great
+wind which smote vigorously the tents of the Surrey Summer-Camp for
+Tired Workers. For a time the tents withstood the fury of the blast;
+they swayed and bent before it, putting up a vigorous defence however.
+Presently a shriek told of the first catastrophe; then followed another
+and yet another, and soon the darkness was rent by cries, shrieks, and
+lamentations, whilst somewhere near the Bindles' tent rose the voice of
+one crying from a wilderness of canvas for 'Enery.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was awakened by the loud slatting of the tent-flap.
+Pandemonium seemed to have broken loose. The wind howled and whistled
+through the tent-ropes, the rain swept against the canvas sides with an
+ominous "swish," the pole bent as the tent swayed from side to side.
+
+"Bindle," she cried, "get up!"
+
+"'Ullo!" he responded sleepily. He had taken the precaution of not
+removing his trousers, a circumstance that was subsequently used as
+evidence against him.
+
+"The tent's coming down," she cried. "Get up and hold the prop."
+
+As she spoke, she scrambled from beneath the blankets and seized the
+brown mackintosh, which she kept ready to hand in case of accidents.
+Wrapping this about her, she clutched at the bending pole, whilst Bindle
+struggled out from among the bedclothes.
+
+Scrambling to his feet, he tripped over the tin-bath. Clutching wildly
+as he fell, he got Mrs. Bindle just above the knees in approved rugger
+style.
+
+With a scream she relinquished the pole to free her legs from Bindle's
+frenzied clutch and, losing her footing, she came down on top of him.
+
+"Leave go," she cried.
+
+"Get up orf my stomach then," he gasped.
+
+At that moment, the wind gave a tremendous lift to the tent. Mrs. Bindle
+was clutching wildly at the base of the pole, Bindle was striving to
+wriggle from beneath her. The combination of forces caused the tent to
+sway wildly. A moment later, it seemed to start angrily from the ground,
+and she fell over backwards, whilst a mass of sopping canvas descended,
+stifling alike her screams and Bindle's protests that he was being
+killed.
+
+It took Bindle nearly five minutes to find his way out from the heavy
+folds of wet canvas. Then he had to go back into the darkness to fetch
+Mrs. Bindle. In order to effect his own escape, Bindle had cut the
+tent-ropes. Just as he had found Mrs. Bindle, a wild gust of wind
+entered behind him, lifted the tent bodily and bore it off.
+
+The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed to strike Mrs. Bindle dumb. To
+be sitting in the middle of a meadow at dead of night, clothed only in a
+nightdress and a mackintosh, with the rain drenching down, seemed to her
+to border upon the indecent.
+
+"You there, Lizzie?" came the voice of Bindle, like the shout of one
+hailing a drowning person.
+
+"Where's the tent?" demanded Mrs. Bindle inconsequently.
+
+"Gawd knows!" he shouted back. "Probably it's at Yarmouth by now. 'Oly
+ointment," he yelled.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I trodden on the marjarine."
+
+"It's all we've got," she cried, her housewifely fears triumphing over
+even the stress of wind and rain and her own intolerable situation.
+
+From the surrounding darkness came shouts and enquiries as disaster
+followed disaster. Heaving masses of canvas laboured and, one by one,
+produced figures scanty of garment and full of protest; but mercifully
+unseen.
+
+Women cried, children shrieked, and men swore volubly.
+
+"I'm sittin' in somethink sticky," cried Bindle presently.
+
+"You've upset the marmalade. Why can't you keep still?"
+
+Keep still! Bindle was searching for the two bottles of Guinness' stout
+he knew to be somewhere among the débris, unconscious that Mrs. Bindle
+had packed them away in the tin-bath.
+
+As the other tents disgorged their human contents, the pandemonium
+increased. In every key, appeals were being made for news of lost units.
+
+By the side of the tin-bath Mrs. Bindle was praying for succour and the
+lost bell-tent, which had sped towards the east as if in search of the
+wise men, leaving all beneath it naked to the few stars that peeped from
+the scudding clouds above, only to hide their faces a moment later as if
+shocked at what they had seen.
+
+Suddenly a brilliant light flashed across the meadow and began to bob
+about like a hundred candle power will-o'-the-wisp. It dodged restlessly
+from place to place, as if in search of something.
+
+Behind a large acetylene motor-lamp, walked Patrol-leader Smithers,
+searching for one single erect bell-tent--there was none.
+
+Shrieks that had been of terror now became cries of alarm. Forms that
+had struggled valiantly to escape from the billowing canvas, now began
+desperately to wriggle back again to the seclusion that modesty
+demanded. With heads still protruding they regarded the scene, praying
+that the rudeness of the wind would not betray them.
+
+Taking immediate charge, Patrol-leader Smithers collected the men and
+gave his orders in a high treble, and his orders were obeyed.
+
+By the time the dawn had begun nervously to finger the east, sufficient
+tents to shelter the women and children had been re-erected, the cause
+of the trouble discovered, and the men rebuked for an injudicious
+slacking of the ropes.
+
+"I ought to have seen to it myself," remarked Patrol-leader Smithers
+with the air of one who knows he has to deal with fools. "You'll be all
+right now," he added reassuringly.
+
+"All right now," growled the man with the stubbly chin as he looked up
+at the grey scudding clouds and then down at the rain-soaked grass. "We
+would if we was ducks, or ruddy boy scouts; but we're men, we are--on
+'oliday," he added with inspiration, and he withdrew to his tent,
+conscious that he had voiced the opinion of all.
+
+
+V
+
+Later that morning three carts, laden with luggage, rumbled their way up
+to West Boxton railway-station, followed by a straggling stream of men,
+women, and children. Overhead heavy rainclouds swung threateningly
+across the sky. Men were smoking their pipes contentedly, for theirs was
+the peace which comes of full knowledge. Behind them they had left a
+litter of bell-tents and the conviction that Daisy in all probability
+would explode before dinner-time. What cared they? A few hours hence
+they would be once more in their known and understood Fulham.
+
+As they reached the station they saw two men struggling with a grey mass
+that looked like a deflated balloon.
+
+The men hailed the party and appealed for help.
+
+"It's the ruddy marquee," cried a voice.
+
+"The blinkin' tent," cried another, not to be outdone in speculative
+intelligence.
+
+"You can take it back with you," cried one of the men from the truck.
+
+"We're demobbed, ole son," said Bindle cheerily. "We've struck."
+
+"No more blinkin' camps for me," said the man with the stubbly chin.
+
+"'Ear, 'ear," came from a number of voices.
+
+"Are we down-hearted?" enquired a voice.
+
+"Nooooooooo!"
+
+And the voices of women and children were heard in the response.
+
+Some half an hour later, as the train steamed out of the station, Bindle
+called out to the porters:
+
+"Tell the bishop not to forget to milk Daisy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, Mrs. B.," said Bindle that evening as he lighted his pipe after
+an excellent supper of sausages, fried onions, and mashed potatoes, "you
+'ad yer 'oliday."
+
+"I believe you was at the bottom of those tents coming down, Bindle,"
+she cried with conviction.
+
+"Well, you was underneath, wasn't you?" was the response, and Bindle
+winked knowingly at the white jug with the pink butterfly on the spout.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+MRS. BINDLE TAKES A CHILL
+
+
+I
+
+    "Your dinner's in the large black saucepan and the potatoes in the
+    blue one. Empty the stewed steak into the yellow pie-dish and the
+    potatoes into the blue vegetable dish and pour water into the
+    saucepans afterwards I've gone to bed--I am feeling ill.
+
+    "E. B.
+
+    "Don't forget to put water into the empty saucepans or they will
+    burn."
+
+Bindle glanced across at the stove as if to verify Mrs. Bindle's
+statement, then, with lined forehead, stood gazing at the table, neatly
+laid for one.
+
+"I never known Lizzie give in before," he muttered, and he walked over
+to the sink and proceeded to have his evening "rinse," an affair
+involving a considerable expenditure of soap and much blowing and
+splashing.
+
+Having wiped his face and hands upon the roller-towel, he walked softly
+across the kitchen, opened the door, listened, stepped out into the
+passage and, finally, proceeded to tiptoe upstairs.
+
+Outside the bedroom door he paused and listened again, his ear pressed
+against the panel. There was no sound.
+
+With the stealth of a burglar he turned the handle, pushed open the door
+some eighteen inches and put his head round the corner.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was lying in bed on her back, her face void of all
+expression, whilst with each indrawn breath there was a hard, metallic
+sound.
+
+Bindle wriggled the rest of his body round the door-post, closing the
+door behind him. With ostentatious care, still tiptoeing, he crossed the
+room and stood by the bedside.
+
+"Ain't you feelin' well, Lizzie?" he asked in a hoarse whisper,
+sufficient in itself to remind an invalid of death.
+
+"Did you put water in the saucepans?" She asked the question without
+turning her head, and with the air of one who has something on her mind.
+The harsh rasp of her voice alarmed Bindle.
+
+"I ain't 'ad supper yet," he said. "Is there anythink you'd like?" he
+enquired solicitously, still in the same depressing whisper.
+
+"No; just leave me alone," she murmured. "Don't forget the water in the
+saucepans," she added a moment later.
+
+For some seconds Bindle stood irresolute. He was convinced that
+something ought to be done; but just what he did not know.
+
+"Wouldn't you like a bit o' fried fish, or--or a pork chop?" he named at
+a venture two of his favourite supper dishes. The fish he could buy
+ready fried, the chop he felt equal to cooking himself.
+
+"Leave me alone." She turned her head aside with a feeble shudder.
+
+"Where are you ill, Lizzie?" he enquired at length.
+
+"Go away," she moaned, and Bindle turned, tip-toed across to the door
+and passed out of the room. He was conscious that the situation was
+beyond him.
+
+That evening he ate his food without relish. His mind was occupied with
+the invalid upstairs and the problem of what he should do. He was
+unaccustomed to illness, either in himself or in others. His instinct
+was to fetch a doctor; but would she like it? It was always a little
+difficult to anticipate Mrs. Bindle's view of any particular action, no
+matter how well-intentioned.
+
+At the conclusion of the meal, he drew his pipe from his pocket and
+proceeded to smoke with a view to inspiration.
+
+Suddenly he was roused by a loud pounding overhead.
+
+"'Oly ointment, she's fallen out!" he muttered, as he made for the door
+and dashed up the stairs two at a time.
+
+As he opened the door, he found Mrs. Bindle sitting up in bed, a red
+flannel petticoat round her shoulders, sniffing the air like a hungry
+hound.
+
+"You're burning my best saucepan," she croaked.
+
+"I ain't, Lizzie, reelly I ain't----" Then memory came to him. He had
+forgotten to put water in either of the saucepans.
+
+"I can smell burning," she persisted, "you----"
+
+"I spilt some stoo on the stove," he lied, feeling secure in the
+knowledge that she could not disprove the statement.
+
+With a groan she sank back on to her pillow.
+
+"The place is like a pigsty. I know it," she moaned with tragic
+conviction.
+
+"No, it ain't, Lizzie. I'm jest goin' to 'ave a clean-up. Wouldn't you
+like somethink to eat?" he enquired again, then with inspiration added,
+"Wot about a tin o' salmon, it'll do your breath good. I'll nip round
+and get one in two ticks."
+
+But Mrs. Bindle shook her head.
+
+For nearly a minute there was silence, during which Bindle gazed down at
+her helplessly.
+
+"I'm a-goin' to fetch a doctor," he announced at length.
+
+"Don't you dare to fetch a doctor to me."
+
+"But if you ain't well----" he began.
+
+"I tell you I won't have a doctor. Look----" She was interrupted by a
+fit of coughing which seemed almost to suffocate her. "Look at the state
+of the bedroom," she gasped at length.
+
+"But wot's goin' to 'appen?" asked Bindle. "You can't----"
+
+"It won't matter," she moaned. "If I die you'll be glad," she added, as
+if to leave no doubt in Bindle's mind as to her own opinion on the
+matter.
+
+"No, I shouldn't. 'Ow could I get on without you?"
+
+"Thinking of yourself as usual," was the retort.
+
+Then, suddenly, she half-lifted herself in bed and, once more raising
+her head, sniffed the air suspiciously.
+
+"I know that saucepan's burning," she said with conviction; but she sank
+back again, panting. The burning of a saucepan seemed a thing of
+ever-lessening importance.
+
+"No, it ain't, Lizzie, reelly it ain't. I filled it right up to the
+brim. It's that bit o' stoo I spilt on the stove. Stinks like billy-o,
+don't it?" His sense of guilt made him garrulous. "I'll go an' scrape it
+orf," he added, and with that he was gone.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" he muttered as he opened the kitchen door, and was
+greeted by a volume of bluish smoke that seemed to catch at his throat.
+
+He made a wild dash for the stove, seized the saucepan and, taking it
+over to the sink, turned on the tap.
+
+A moment later he dropped the saucepan into the sink and started back,
+blinded by a volume of steam that issued from its interior.
+
+Swiftly and quietly he opened the window and the outer door.
+
+"You ain't no cook, J.B.," he muttered, as he unhitched the roller-towel
+and proceeded to use it as a fan, with the object of driving the smell
+out of the window and scullery-door.
+
+When the air was clearer, he returned to the sink and, this time,
+filled both the saucepans with water and replaced them on the stove.
+
+"I wonder wot I better do," he muttered, and he looked about him
+helplessly.
+
+Then, with sudden inspiration, he remembered Mrs. Hearty.
+
+Creeping softly upstairs, he put his head round the bedroom door and
+announced that he was going out to buy a paper. Without waiting for
+either criticism or comment, he quickly closed the door again.
+
+Ten minutes later, he was opening the glass-panelled door, with the
+white curtains and blue tie-ups, that led from Mr. Hearty's Fulham shop
+to the parlour behind.
+
+Mrs. Hearty was sitting at the table, a glass half-full of Guinness'
+stout before her.
+
+At the sight of Bindle, she began to laugh, and laughter always reduced
+her to a state that was half-anguish, half-ecstasy.
+
+"Oh, Joe!" she wheezed, and then began to heave and undulate with mirth.
+
+At the sight of the anxious look on his face she stopped suddenly, and
+with her clenched fist began to pound her chest.
+
+"It's my breath, Joe," she wheezed. "It don't seem to get no better.
+'Ave a drop," she gasped, pointing to the Guinness bottle on the table.
+"There's a glass on the dresser," she added; but Bindle shook an anxious
+head.
+
+"It's Lizzie," he said.
+
+"Lizzie!" wheezed Mrs. Hearty. "What she been doin' now?"
+
+Mrs. Hearty possessed no illusions about her sister's capacity to
+contrive any man's domestic happiness. Her own philosophy was, "If
+things must happen, let 'em," whereas she was well aware that Mrs.
+Bindle strove to control the wheels of destiny.
+
+"When you're my size," she would say, "you won't want to worry about
+anything; it's the lean 'uns as grizzles."
+
+"She's ill in bed," he explained, "an' I don't know wot to do. Says she
+won't see a doctor, an' she's sort o' fidgetty because she thinks I'm
+burnin' the bloomin' saucepans--an' I 'ave burned 'em, Martha," he added
+confidentially. "Such a stink."
+
+Whereat Mrs. Hearty began to heave, and strange movements rippled down
+her manifold chins. She was laughing.
+
+There was, however, no corresponding light of humour in Bindle's eyes,
+and she quickly recovered herself. "What's the matter with 'er, Joe?"
+she gasped.
+
+"She won't say where it is," he replied. "I think it's 'er chest."
+
+"All right, I'll come round," and she proceeded to make a series of
+strange heaving movements until, eventually, she acquired sufficient
+bounce to bring her to her feet. "You go back, Joe," she added.
+
+"Righto, Martha! You always was a sport," and Bindle walked towards the
+door. As he opened it he turned. "You won't say anythink about them
+saucepans," he said anxiously.
+
+"Oh! go hon, do," wheezed Mrs. Hearty, beginning to undulate once more.
+
+With her brother-in-law, Mrs. Hearty was never able to distinguish
+between the sacred and the profane.
+
+Half an hour later, Mrs. Hearty and Bindle were standing one on either
+side of Mrs. Bindle's bed. Mrs. Hearty was wearing a much-worn silk
+plush cape and an old, pale-blue tam-o-shanter, originally belonging to
+her daughter, which gave her a rakish appearance.
+
+"What's the matter, Lizzie?" she asked, puffing like a collie in the Dog
+Days.
+
+"I'm ill. Leave me alone!" moaned Mrs. Bindle in a husky voice.
+
+Bindle looked across at Mrs. Hearty, in a way that seemed to say, "I
+told you she was bad."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Lizzie," was her sister's uncompromising comment. "You
+go for a doctor, Joe."
+
+"I won't have----" began Mrs. Bindle, then she stopped suddenly, a
+harsh, bronchial cough cutting off the rest of her sentence.
+
+"You've got bronchitis," said Mrs. Hearty with conviction. "Put the
+kettle on before you go out, Joe."
+
+"Leave me alone," moaned Mrs. Bindle. "Oh! I don't want to die, I don't
+want to die."
+
+"You ain't goin' to die, Lizzie," said Bindle, bending over her, anxiety
+in his face. "You're goin' to live to be a 'undred."
+
+"You go an' fetch a doctor, Joe. I'll see to 'er," and Mrs. Hearty
+proceeded to remove her elaborate black plush cape.
+
+"I don't want a doctor," moaned Mrs. Bindle. In her heart was a great
+fear lest he should confirm her own fears that death was at hand; but
+Bindle had disappeared on his errand of mercy, and Mrs. Hearty was
+wheezing and groaning as, with arms above her head, she strove to
+discover the single hat-pin with which she had fixed the tam-o-shanter
+to her scanty hair.
+
+"There's two rashers of bacon and an egg on the top shelf of the larder
+for Joe's breakfast," murmured Mrs. Bindle hoarsely.
+
+Mrs. Hearty nodded as she passed out of the door.
+
+In spite of her weight and the shortness of her breath, she descended to
+the kitchen. When Bindle returned, he found the bedroom reeking with the
+smell of vinegar. Mrs. Bindle was sitting up in bed, a towel enveloping
+her head, so that the fumes of the boiling vinegar should escape from
+the basin only by way of her bronchial tubes.
+
+"'Ow is she?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"She's all right," gasped Mrs. Hearty. "Is 'e coming?"
+
+"Be 'ere in two ticks," was the response. "Two of 'em was out, this was
+the third."
+
+He stood regarding with an air of relief the strange outline of Mrs.
+Bindle's head enveloped in the towel. Someone had at last done
+something.
+
+"She ain't a-goin' to die, Martha, is she?" he enquired of Mrs. Hearty,
+his brow lined with anxiety.
+
+"Not 'er," breathed Mrs. Hearty reassuringly. "It's bronchitis. You just
+light a fire, Joe."
+
+Almost before the words were out of her mouth, Bindle had tip-toed to
+the door and was taking the stairs three at a time. Action was the one
+thing he desired. He determined that, the fire once laid, he would set
+to work to clean out the saucepan he had burned. Somehow that saucepan
+seemed to bite deep into his conscience.
+
+The doctor came, saw, and confirmed Mrs. Hearty's diagnosis. Having
+prescribed a steam-kettle, inhalations of eucalyptus, slop food, warmth
+and air, he left, promising to look in again on the morrow.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs, he was waylaid by Bindle.
+
+"It ain't----" he began eagerly, then paused.
+
+The doctor, a young, fair man, looked down from his six feet one, at
+Bindle's anxious enquiring face.
+
+"Nothing to be alarmed about," he said cheerfully. "I'll run in again
+to-morrow, and we'll soon have her about again."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Bindle, drawing a sigh of obvious relief. "Funny
+thing," he muttered as he closed the door on the doctor, "that you never
+seems to think o' dyin' till somebody gets ill. I'm glad 'e's a big
+'un," he added inconsequently. "Mrs. B. likes 'em big," and he returned
+to the kitchen, where he proceeded to scrape the stove and scour the
+saucepan, whilst Mrs. Hearty continued to minister to her afflicted
+sister.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's thoughts seemed to be preoccupied with her domestic
+responsibilities. From time to time she issued her instructions.
+
+"Make Joe up a bed on the couch in the parlour," she murmured hoarsely.
+"I'd keep him awake if he slept here."
+
+"Try an' get Mrs. Coppen to come in to get Joe's dinner," she said, a
+few minutes later.
+
+And yet again she requested her sister to watch the bread-pan to see
+that the supply was kept up. "Joe eats a lot of bread," she added.
+
+To all these remarks, Mrs. Hearty returned the same reply. "Don't you
+worry, Lizzie. You just get to sleep."
+
+That night Bindle worked long and earnestly that things might be as Mrs.
+Bindle had left them; but fate was against him. Nothing he was able to
+do could remove from the inside of the saucepan the damning evidences of
+his guilt. The stove, however, was an easier matter; but even that
+presented difficulties; for, as soon as he applied the moist blacklead,
+it dried with a hiss and the polishing brush, with the semi-circle of
+bristles at the end that reminded him of "'Earty's whiskers," instead of
+producing a polish, merely succeeded in getting burned. Furthermore, he
+had the misfortune to break a plate and a pie-dish.
+
+At the second smash, there was a tapping from the room above, and, on
+going to the door, he heard Mrs. Hearty wheezing an enquiry as to what
+it was that was broken.
+
+"Only an old galley-pot, Martha," he lied, and returned to gather up the
+pieces. These he wrapped in a newspaper and placed in the
+dresser-drawer, determined to carry them off next day. He was convinced
+that if Mrs. Bindle were about again before the merciful arrival of the
+dustman, she would inevitably subject the dust-bin to a rigorous
+examination.
+
+At ten o'clock, Mrs. Hearty heavily descended the stairs and, as well as
+her breath would permit, she instructed him what to do during the
+watches of the night. Bindle listened earnestly. Never in his life had
+he made a linseed poultice, and the management of a steam-kettle was to
+him a new activity.
+
+When he heard about the bed on the couch, he looked the surprise he
+felt. Mrs. Bindle never allowed him even to sit on it. He resolutely
+vetoed the bed, however. He was going to sit up and "try an' bring 'er
+round," as he expressed it.
+
+"Is she goin' to die, Martha?" he interrogated anxiously. That question
+seemed to obsess his thoughts.
+
+Mrs. Hearty shook her head and beat her breast. She lacked the necessary
+oxygen to reply more explicitly.
+
+Having conducted Mrs. Hearty to the garden gate, he returned, closed and
+bolted the door, and proceeded upstairs. As he entered the bedroom, he
+was greeted by a harsh, bronchial cough that terrified him.
+
+"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired, with all the forced optimism of a
+man obviously anxious.
+
+Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, looked at him for a moment, then, closing
+them again, shook her head.
+
+"'As 'e sent you any physic?" he enquired.
+
+Again Mrs. Bindle shook her head, this time without opening her eyes.
+
+Bindle's heart sank. If the doctor didn't see the necessity for
+medicine, the case must indeed be desperate.
+
+"What did he say, Joe?" she enquired in a hoarse voice.
+
+In spite of himself Bindle started slightly at the name. He had not
+heard it for many years.
+
+"'E said you're a-gettin' on fine," he lied.
+
+"Am I very ill? Is it----"
+
+"You ain't got nothink much the matter with you, Lizzie," he replied
+lightly, in his anxiety to comfort, conveying the impression that she
+was in extreme danger. "Jest a bit of a chill."
+
+"Am I dying, Joe?"
+
+In spite of its repetition, the name still seemed unfamiliar to him.
+
+"I shall be dead-meat long before you, Lizzie," he said, and his failure
+to answer her question directly, confirmed Mrs. Bindle in her view that
+the end was very near.
+
+"I'm goin' to make you some arrowroot, now," he said, with an assurance
+in his voice that he was far from feeling. Ever since Mrs. Hearty had
+explained to him the mysteries of arrowroot-making, he had felt how
+absolutely unequal he was to the task.
+
+Through Mrs. Bindle's mind flashed a vision of milk allowed to boil
+over; but she felt herself too near the End to put her thoughts into
+words.
+
+With uncertainty in his heart and anxiety in his eyes, Bindle descended
+to the kitchen. Selecting a small saucepan, which Mrs. Bindle kept for
+onions, he poured into it, as instructed by Mrs. Hearty, a
+breakfast-cupful of milk. This he placed upon the stove, which in one
+spot was manifesting a dull red tint. Bindle was thorough in all things,
+especially in the matter of stoking.
+
+He then opened the packet of arrowroot and poured it into a white
+pudding-basin. At the point where Mrs. Hearty was to have indicated the
+quantity of arrowroot to be used, she had been more than usually short
+of breath, with the result that Bindle did not catch the
+"two-tablespoonfuls" she had mentioned.
+
+He then turned to the stove to watch the milk, forgetting that Mrs.
+Hearty had warned him to mix the arrowroot into a thin paste with cold
+milk before pouring on to it the hot.
+
+As the milk manifested no particular excitement, Bindle drew from his
+pocket the evening paper which, up to now, he had forgotten. He promptly
+became absorbed in a story of the finding at Enfield of a girl's body
+bearing evidences of foul play.
+
+He was roused from his absorption by a violent hiss from the stove and,
+a moment later, he was holding aloft the saucepan, from which a Niagara
+of white foam streamed over the sides on to the angry stove beneath.
+
+"Wot a stink," he muttered, as he stepped back and turned towards the
+kitchen table. "Only jest in time, though," he added as, with spoon in
+one hand, he proceeded to pour the boiling milk on to the arrowroot,
+assiduously stirring the while.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," he muttered as, at the end of some five minutes, he
+stood regarding a peculiarly stodgy mass composed of a glutinous
+substance in which were white bubbles containing a fine powder.
+
+For several minutes he stood regarding it doubtfully, and then, with the
+air of a man who desires to make assurance doubly sure, he spooned the
+mass out on to a plate and once more stood regarding it.
+
+"Looks as if it wants a few currants," he murmured dubiously, as he
+lifted the plate from the table, preparatory to taking it up to Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"I brought you somethink to eat, Lizzie," he announced, as he closed the
+door behind him.
+
+Mrs. Bindle shook her head, then opening her eyes, fixed them upon the
+strange viscid mass that Bindle extended to her.
+
+"What is that smell?" she murmured wearily.
+
+"Smell," said Bindle, sniffing the air like a cat when fish is boiling.
+"I don't smell nothink, Lizzie."
+
+"You've burned something," she moaned feebly.
+
+"'Ere, eat this," he said with forced cheerfulness, "then you'll feel
+better."
+
+Once more Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, gazed at the mass, then shaking
+her head, turned her face to the wall.
+
+For five minutes, Bindle strove to persuade her. Finally, recognising
+defeat, he placed the plate on a chair by the bedside and, seating
+himself on a little green-painted box, worn at the edges so that the
+original white wood showed through, he proceeded to look the
+helplessness he felt.
+
+"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired at length, holding his breath
+eagerly as he waited for the reply.
+
+Mrs. Bindle shook her head drearily, and his heart sank.
+
+Suddenly, he remembered Mrs. Hearty's earnest exhortation to keep the
+steam-kettle in operation. Once more he descended to the kitchen and,
+whilst the kettle was boiling, he occupied himself with scraping the
+heat-flaked milk from the top of the stove.
+
+Throughout that night he laboured at the steam-kettle, or sat gazing
+helplessly at Mrs. Bindle, despair clutching at his heart, impotence
+dogging his footsteps. From time to time he would offer her the now cold
+slab of arrowroot, or else enquire if she were feeling better; but Mrs.
+Bindle refused the one and denied the other.
+
+With the dawn came inspiration.
+
+"Would you like a kipper for breakfast, Lizzie?" he enquired, hope
+shining in his eyes.
+
+This time Mrs. Bindle not only shook her head, but manifested by her
+expression such a repugnance that he felt repulsed. The very thought of
+kippers made his own mouth water and, recalling that Mrs. Bindle was
+particularly partial to them, he realised that her condition must be
+extremely grave.
+
+Soon after nine, Mrs. Hearty arrived and insisted on preparing breakfast
+for Bindle. Having despatched him to his work she proceeded to tidy-up.
+
+After the doctor had called, Mrs. Bindle once more sought news as to
+her condition. This time Mrs. Hearty, obviously keen on reassuring the
+invalid, succeeded also in confirming her morbid convictions.
+
+At the sight of the plate containing Bindle's conception of arrowroot
+for an invalid, Mrs. Hearty had at first manifested curiosity, then, on
+discovering the constituent parts of the unsavoury-looking mess, she had
+collapsed upon the green-painted box, wheezing and heaving until her
+gasps for breath caused Mrs. Bindle to open her eyes.
+
+For nearly a week, Bindle and Mrs. Hearty devoted themselves to the sick
+woman. Every morning Bindle was late for work, and when he could get
+home he spent more than half of his dinner-hour by Mrs. Bindle's
+bedside, asking the inevitable question as to whether she were feeling
+better.
+
+In the evening, he got home as fast as bus, train or tram could take
+him, and not once did he go to bed.
+
+During the whole period, Mrs. Bindle was as docile and amenable to
+reason as a poor relation. Never had she been so subdued. From Mrs.
+Hearty she took the food that was prepared for her, and acquiesced in
+the remedies administered. Amidst a perfect tornado of wheezes and
+gaspings, Mrs. Hearty had confided to Bindle that he had better refrain
+from invalid cookery.
+
+Nothing that either the doctor or Mrs. Hearty could say would convince
+Mrs. Bindle that she was long for this world. The very cheerfulness of
+those around her seemed proof positive that they were striving to
+inspire her with a hope they were far from feeling.
+
+In her contemplation of Eternity, Mrs. Bindle forgot her kitchen, and
+the probable desolation Bindle was wreaking. Smells of burning, no
+matter how pungent, left her unmoved, and Bindle, finding that for the
+first time in his life immunity surrounded him, proceeded from one
+gastronomic triumph to another. He burned sausages in the frying-pan,
+boiled dried haddock in a porcelain-lined milk-saucepan and, not daring
+to confuse the flavour of sausages and fish, had hit upon the novel plan
+of cooking a brace of bloaters upon the top of the stove itself.
+
+Culinary enthusiasm seized him, and he invented several little dishes of
+his own. Some were undoubted successes, notably one made up of tomatoes,
+fried onions and little strips of bacon; but he met his Waterloo in a
+dish composed of fried onions and eggs. The eggs were much quicker off
+the mark than the onions, and won in a canter. He quickly realised that
+swift decision was essential. It was a case either of raw onions and
+cooked eggs, or cooked onions and cindered eggs.
+
+Never had such scents risen from Mrs. Bindle's stove to the receptive
+nostrils of the gods; yet through it all Mrs. Bindle made neither
+protest nor enquiry.
+
+Even Mrs. Hearty was appalled by the state in which she found the
+kitchen each morning.
+
+"My word, Joe!" she would wheeze. "You don't 'alf make a mess," and she
+would gaze from the stove to the table, and from the table to the sink,
+all of which bore manifest evidence of Bindle's culinary activities.
+
+Mrs. Bindle, however, seemed oblivious of the cares of this world in her
+anxiety not to make the journey to the next. As her breath became more
+constricted, so her alarm increased.
+
+In her eyes there was a mute appeal that Bindle, for one, found it
+impossible to ignore. Instinctively he sensed what was troubling her,
+and he lost no opportunity of striving to reassure her by saying that
+she would be out and about again before she could say "Jack Robinson."
+
+Still there lurked in her eyes a Great Fear. She had never before had
+bronchitis, and the difficulty she experienced in breathing seemed to
+her morbidly suggestive of approaching death. Although she had never
+seen anyone die, she had in her own mind associated death with a
+terrible struggle for breath.
+
+Once when Bindle suggested that she might like to see Mr. MacFie, the
+minister of the Alton Road Chapel, Mrs. Bindle turned upon him such an
+agonised look that he instinctively shrank back.
+
+"Might-a-been Ole Nick 'isself," he later confided to Mrs. Hearty, "and
+me a-thinkin' to please 'er."
+
+"She's afraid o' dying, Joe," wheezed Mrs. Hearty "Alf was just the same
+when 'e 'ad the flu."
+
+Bindle spent money with the recklessness of a desperate man. He bought
+strange and inappropriate foods in the hope that they would tempt Mrs.
+Bindle's appetite. No matter where his work led him, he was always on
+the look out for some dainty, which he would purchase and carry home in
+triumph to Mrs. Hearty.
+
+"You ain't 'alf a joke, Joe," she wheezed one evening, sinking down upon
+a chair and proceeding to heave and billow with suppressed laughter.
+
+Bindle looked lugubriously at the yellow pie-dish into which he had just
+emptied about a quart of whelks, purchased in the Mile End Road.
+
+"Ain't they good for bronchitis?" he enquired with a crestfallen look.
+
+"Last night it was pig's feet," gasped Mrs. Hearty, "and the night
+before saveloys," and she proceeded to beat her chest with a grubby
+fist.
+
+After that, Bindle had fallen back upon less debatable things. He had
+purchased illustrated papers, flowers, a quarter of a pound of chocolate
+creams, which had become a little wilted, owing to the crowded state of
+the tramcar in which he had returned home that night.
+
+During those anxious days, he collected a strange assortment of
+articles, perishable and otherwise. The thing he could not do was to go
+home without some token of his solicitude.
+
+One evening he acquired a vividly coloured oleograph in a gilt frame,
+which depicted a yawning grave, whilst in the distance an angel was to
+be seen carrying a very material-looking spirit to heaven.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's reception of the gift was a wild look of terror, followed
+by a fit of coughing that frightened Bindle almost as much as it did
+her.
+
+"Funny," he remarked later as he carried the picture out of the room. "I
+thought she'd 'ave liked an angel."
+
+It was Bindle who eventually solved the problem of how to convey
+comfort to Mrs. Bindle's distraught spirit.
+
+One evening he accompanied the doctor to her room. After the customary
+questions and answers between doctor and patient, Bindle suddenly burst
+out.
+
+"I got a bet on with the doctor, Lizzie."
+
+From an anxious contemplation of the doctor's face, where she had been
+striving to read the worst, Mrs. Bindle turned her eyes to Bindle's
+cheery countenance.
+
+"'E's bet me a quid you'll be cookin' my dinner this day week," he
+announced.
+
+The effect of the announcement on Mrs. Bindle was startling. A new light
+sprang into her eyes, her cheeks became faintly pink as she turned to
+the doctor a look of interrogation.
+
+"It's true, Mrs. Bindle, and your husband's going to lose, that is if
+you're careful and don't take a chill."
+
+Within ten minutes Mrs. Bindle had fallen into a deep sleep, having
+first ordered Bindle to put another blanket on the bed--she was going to
+take no risks.
+
+"The first time I ever knowed Mrs. B. 'ear me talk about bettin' without
+callin' me a 'eathen," remarked Bindle, as he saw the doctor out.
+"Wonders'll never cease," he murmured, as he returned to the kitchen.
+"One o' these days she'll be askin' me to put a shillin' on both ways.
+Funny things, women!"
+
+
+II
+
+Bindle's plot with the doctor did more to expedite Mrs. Bindle's
+recovery than all the care that had been lavished upon her. From the
+hour she awakened from a long and refreshing sleep, she began to
+manifest interest in her surroundings. Her appetite improved and her
+sense of smell became more acute, so that Bindle had to select for his
+dishes materials giving out a less pungent odour.
+
+He took the additional precaution of doing his cooking with the window
+and scullery-door open to their fullest extent.
+
+Mrs. Bindle, on her part, took pleasure in planning the meals she
+imagined Mrs. Coppen was cooking. She had not been told that the
+charwoman was in prison for assaulting a policeman with a gin bottle.
+
+"You'll 'ave to look out now, Joe," admonished Mrs. Hearty on one
+occasion as she entered the kitchen and gazed down at the table upon
+which Bindle was gathering together materials for what he described as a
+"top 'ole stoo." "If Lizzie was to catch you making all this mess
+she----" Mrs. Hearty finished in a series of wheezes.
+
+One evening, when Bindle's menu consisted of corned-beef, piccalilli and
+beer, to be followed by pancakes of his own making, the blow fell.
+
+The corned beef, piccalilli and beer were excellent and he had enjoyed
+them; but the pancakes were to be his chef d'oeuvre. His main object in
+selecting pancakes was, as he explained to Mrs. Hearty, "that they don't
+stink while cookin'."
+
+From his sister-in-law he had obtained a general idea of how to proceed.
+She had even gone so far as to assist in mixing the batter.
+
+The fat was bubbling merrily in the frying-pan as he poured in
+sufficient liquid for at least three pancakes.
+
+"You ain't got much to learn about cookin', old cock," he muttered, as
+he watched the fat bubble darkly round the cream-coloured batter.
+
+After a lapse of some five minutes he decided that the underside was
+sufficiently done. Then came the problem of how to turn the pancake. He
+had heard that expert cooks could toss them in such a way that they fell
+into the pan again on the reverse side; but he was too wise to take such
+a risk, particularly as the upper portion of the pancake was still in a
+liquid state.
+
+He determined upon more cautious means of achieving his object. With the
+aid of a tablespoon and a fish-slice, he managed to get the pancake
+reversed. It is true that it had a crumpled appearance, and a
+considerable portion of the loose batter had fallen on to the stove;
+still he regarded it as an achievement.
+
+Just as he was contemplating the turning of the pancake on to a plate, a
+knock came at the front-door. On answering it, Bindle found a butcher's
+boy, who insisted that earlier in the day he had left a pound of
+beef-steak at No. 7, instead of at No. 17. The lad was confident, and
+refused to accept Bindle's assurance that he had neither seen nor heard
+of the missing meat.
+
+The argument waxed fierce and eventually developed into personalities,
+mainly from the butcher-boy.
+
+Suddenly Bindle remembered his pancake. Banging the door in the lad's
+face, he dashed along the passage and opened the kitchen door. For a
+second he stood appalled, the pancake seemed to have eaten up every
+scrap of oxygen the room contained, and in its place had sent forth a
+suffocating smell of burning.
+
+Realising that in swift action alone lay his salvation, Bindle dashed
+across the room, opened the door leading to the scullery and then the
+scullery door itself. He threw up the window and, with water streaming
+from his eyes, approached the stove. A blackened ruin was all that
+remained of his pancake.
+
+Picking up the frying-pan he carried it over to the sink, where he stood
+regarding the charred mass. Suddenly he recollected that he had left
+open the kitchen-door leading into the passage. Dropping the frying-pan,
+he made a dash to close it; but he was too late. There, with her
+shoulders encased in a red flannel petticoat, stood Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"My Gawd!" he muttered tragically.
+
+For nearly a minute she stood as if turned to stone. Then without a word
+she closed the door behind her, walked to the centre of the room, and
+stood absorbing the scene of ruin and desolation about her, Bindle
+backing into the furthest corner.
+
+She regarded the stove, generously flaked with the overflow of Bindle's
+culinary enthusiasm, glanced up at the discoloured dish-covers over the
+mantelpiece, the brightness of which had always been her special pride.
+
+On to the dresser her eye wandered, and was met by a riot of dirty
+dishes and plates, salmon tins, empty beer bottles, crusts of bread,
+reinforced by an old boot.
+
+The kitchen-table held her attention for fully half a minute. The torn
+newspaper covering it was stained to every shade of black and brown and
+grey, the whole being composed by a large yellow splotch, where a cup of
+very liquid mustard had come to grief.
+
+Upon this informal tablecloth was strewn a medley of unwashed plates,
+knives and forks, bread-crumbs, potato-peelings and fish-bones.
+
+Having gazed her fill, and still ominously silent, she proceeded to make
+a thorough tour of inspection, Bindle watching her with distended eyes,
+fear clutching at his heart.
+
+At the sink she stood for some seconds steadfastly regarding Bindle's
+pancake. Her lips had now entirely disappeared.
+
+The crisis came when she opened the dresser drawer and found the
+pie-dish and plate he had broken, but had forgotten to take away.
+Screwing up the packet again, she turned swiftly and hurled it at him
+with all her strength.
+
+Wholly unprepared, Bindle made a vain effort to dodge; but the package
+got him on the side of the head, and a red line above his ear showed
+that Mrs. Bindle had drawn first blood.
+
+"You fiend!" she cried. "Oh, you----!" and dropping into the chair by
+the table she collapsed.
+
+Soon the kitchen was ringing with the sounds of her hysterical laughter.
+Bindle watched her like one hypnotised.
+
+As if to save his reason, a knock came at the outer door. He
+side-stepped swiftly and made a dash for the door giving access to the
+hall. A moment later he was gazing with relief at Mrs. Hearty's pale
+blue tam o' shanter.
+
+"'Ow is she, Joe?" she wheezed.
+
+Then as he stepped aside to allow Mrs. Hearty to precede him into the
+kitchen, Bindle found voice. "I think she's better," he mumbled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE
+
+
+I
+
+"Pleasant company, you are," snapped Mrs. Bindle, as she made an
+onslaught upon the kitchen fire, jabbing it viciously with a short steel
+poker.
+
+Bindle looked up from the newspaper he was reading. It was the third
+attack upon the kitchen fire within the space of five minutes, and he
+recognised the portents--a storm was brewing.
+
+"I might as well be on a desert island for all the company you are," she
+continued. "Here am I alone all day long with no one to speak to, and
+when you come home you just sit reading the horse-racing news in the
+paper."
+
+"Wot jer like to talk about?" he enquired, allowing the paper to drop to
+the floor opposite him.
+
+She sniffed angrily and threw the poker into the ash-pan.
+
+"I wasn't readin' about racin'," he continued pacifically. "I was jest
+readin' about a cove wot went orf with another cove's missis, 'is best
+overcoat and two chickens."
+
+"Stop it!" She stood over him, her lips compressed, her eyes hard and
+steely, as if meditating violence, then, turning suddenly, she walked
+swiftly across to the dresser and pulled out the left-hand drawer.
+Taking from it her bonnet, she put it on her head and proceeded to tie
+the strings beneath her chin.
+
+From behind the kitchen door she unhooked a brown mackintosh, into which
+she struggled.
+
+"Goin' out?" he enquired.
+
+"Yes," she replied, as she tore open the door, "and perhaps I'll never
+come back again," and with a bang that shook the house she was gone.
+
+She took a tram to Hammersmith on her way to see her niece, Millie
+Dixon. She was angry; the day had been one of continual annoyances and
+vexations. Entering the car she buried her elbows deep into the
+redundant figure of a woman who was also endeavouring to enter.
+
+Once inside, the woman began to inform the car what she thought of
+"scraggy 'Uns with faces like a drop of vinegar on the edge of a knife."
+
+"That's the way you gets cancer," she continued, as she stroked the left
+side of her ample bust. "People with elbows like that should 'ave 'em
+padded," and Mrs. Bindle was conscious that the car was with her
+antagonist.
+
+Mrs. Bindle next proceeded to quarrel with the conductor about the fare,
+which had gone up a halfpenny, and she ended by threatening to report
+him for not setting her down between the scheduled stopping-places.
+
+"She's lost a Bradbury and found the water-rate," remarked the
+conductor, as he turned once more to the occupants of the car after
+watching Mrs. Bindle alight.
+
+The fat woman responded to the pleasantry by expressing her views on
+"them wot don't know 'ow to be'ave theirselves like ladies."
+
+With Mrs. Bindle, the lure of Joseph the Second was strong within her.
+When her loneliness became too great for endurance, or the domestic
+atmosphere manifested signs of a greater voltage than the normal, her
+thoughts instinctively flew to the blue-eyed nephew, who slobbered and
+cooed at her and raised his chubby fists in meaningless gestures. Then
+the hunger within her would be appeased, until some chance mention of
+Bindle's name would awaken her self-pity.
+
+She found Millie alone with Joseph the Second asleep in his cot beside
+her. As she feasted her gaze upon the eye-shut babe, Mrs. Bindle was
+conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She wanted to babble
+baby-talk, and gaze into those filmy blue eyes.
+
+In spite of her aunt's protests, Millie made a cup of tea, explaining as
+she did so that Charley was staying late at the office.
+
+"It's a good cake, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle a few minutes later, as she
+delicately cut another small square from the slice of home-made cake
+upon the plate before her. In her eyes there was a look which was a
+tribute from one good cook to another. "Who gave you the recipe?"
+
+"It was all through Uncle Joe," said Millie. "He was always saying what
+a wonderful cook you are, Aunt Lizzie, and that if you didn't feed
+pussy he wouldn't purr," she laughed. "You know what funny things he
+says," she added parenthetically--"so I took lessons. You see," she
+added quaintly, "I wanted Charley to be very happy."
+
+"Pretty lot of purring there is in our house," was Mrs. Bindle's grim
+comment, as she raised her cup-and-saucer from the table upon the
+finger-tips of her left hand and, with little finger awkwardly crooked,
+lifted the cup with her disengaged hand and proceeded to sip the tea
+with Victorian refinement.
+
+"How is Uncle Joe?" asked Millie. "I wish he had come."
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me about your uncle," cried Mrs. Bindle peevishly.
+"He's sitting at home smoking a filthy pipe and reading the horse-racing
+news. I might be dirt under his feet for all the notice he takes of me."
+
+The grievances of the day had been cumulative with Mrs. Bindle, and the
+burden was too heavy to be borne in silence. Beginning with a bad tomato
+among the pound she had bought that morning at Mr. Hearty's Fulham shop,
+her troubles had piled up one upon another to the point when she found
+Joseph the Second asleep.
+
+She had burned one of her best hem-stitched handkerchiefs whilst ironing
+it, the milk had "turned" on account of the thunder in the air and, to
+crown the morning's tragedies, she had burned a saucepan owing to the
+dustman coming at an inconvenient moment.
+
+"He's never been a proper husband to me," she sniffed ominously.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lizzie," said Millie gently, as she leaned forward and placed
+her hand upon Mrs. Bindle's arm.
+
+"He humiliates me before other people and--and sometimes I wish I was
+dead, Millie, God forgive me." Her voice broke as she stifled a sob.
+
+Millie's large, grave eyes were full of sympathy, mixed with a little
+wonder. She could not understand how anyone could find "Uncle Joe" other
+than adorable.
+
+"Ever since I married him he's been the same," continued Mrs. Bindle,
+the flood-gates of self-pity opening wide under the influence of
+Millie's gentleness and sympathy. "He tries to make me look small before
+other people and--and I've always been a good wife to him."
+
+Again she sniffed, and Millie squeezed her arm affectionately.
+
+"He's just the same with Mr.--with your father," Mrs. Bindle corrected
+herself. "Why he stands it I don't know. If I was a man I'd hit him,
+that I would, and hard too," she added as if to allow of no doubt in her
+niece's mind as to the nature of the punishment she would administer.
+"I'd show him; but Mr. Hearty's so good and patient and gentle." Mrs.
+Bindle produced a handkerchief, and proceeded to dab the corners of her
+eyes, although there was no indication of tears.
+
+"But, Aunt Lizzie," protested Millie gently, "I'm sure he doesn't mean
+to make you--to humiliate you." She felt that loyalty to her beloved
+Uncle Joe demanded that she should defend him. "You see, he--he loves a
+joke, and he's very good to--to, oh, everybody! Charley just loves Uncle
+Joe," she added, as if that settled the matter as far as she were
+concerned.
+
+"Look how he goes on about the chapel," continued Mrs. Bindle, fearful
+lest her niece's sympathy should be snatched from her. "I wonder God
+doesn't strike him dead. I'm sure I----"
+
+"Strike him dead!" cried Millie in horror. "Oh, Aunt Lizzie! you don't
+mean that, you couldn't." She paused, seeming to bring the whole twelve
+months of her matronhood to the examination of the problem. "I know he's
+very naughty sometimes," she added sagely, "but he loves you, Aunt
+Lizzie. He thinks that----"
+
+"Love!" cried Mrs. Bindle with all the scorn of a woman who has no
+intention of being comforted. "He loves nothing but his food and his low
+companions. He shames me before the neighbours, talking that familiar
+with common men. When I'm out with him he shouts out to bus-conductors,
+or whistles at policemen, or winks at--at hussies in the street." She
+paused in the catalogue of Bindle's crimes, whilst Millie turned her
+head to hide the smile she could not quite repress.
+
+She herself had been with Bindle when he had called out to his
+bus-conductor friends, and whistled under his breath when passing a
+policeman, "If You Want to Know the Time Ask a Policeman"; but he had
+never winked at girls when he had been with her; of that she was sure.
+
+"You see, Aunt Lizzie, he knows so many people, and they all like him
+and----"
+
+"Only common people, like chauffeurs and workmen," was the retort. "When
+I'm out with him I sometimes want to sink through the ground with shame.
+He lets them call him 'Joe,' and of course they don't respect me." Again
+she sniffed ominously.
+
+"I'll speak to him," said Millie with a wise little air that she had
+assumed since her marriage.
+
+"Speak to him!" cried Mrs. Bindle scornfully. "Might as well speak to a
+brick wall. I've spoken to him until I'm tired, and what does he do?
+Laughs at me and says I'm as----" she paused, as if finding difficulty
+in bringing herself to give Bindle's actual expression--"says I'm as
+holy as ointment, if you know what that means."
+
+"But he doesn't mean to be unkind, Aunt Lizzie, I'm sure he doesn't,"
+protested Millie loyally. "He calls Boy--I mean Charley," she corrected
+herself with a little blush, "all sorts of names," and she laughed at
+some recollection of her own. "Don't you think, Aunt Lizzie----" she
+paused, conscious that she was approaching delicate ground. "Don't you
+think that if you and Uncle Joe were both to try and--and----" she
+stopped, looking across at her aunt anxiously, her lower lip indrawn and
+her eyes gravely wide.
+
+"Try and what?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, a hardness creeping into her voice
+at the thought that anyone could see any mitigating circumstance in
+Bindle's treatment of her.
+
+"I thought that if perhaps--I mean," hesitated Millie, "that if you both
+tried very hard to--to, not to hurt each other----" again she stopped.
+
+"I'm sure I've never said anything to him that all the world might not
+hear," retorted Mrs. Bindle, with the unction of the righteous,
+"although he's always saying things to me that make me hot with shame,
+married woman though I am."
+
+"But, Aunt Lizzie," persisted Millie, clasping Mrs. Bindle's arm with
+both hands, and looking appealingly up into her face, "won't you try,
+just for my sake, pleeeeeease," she coaxed.
+
+"I've tried until I'm tired of trying," was the ungracious retort. "I
+moil and toil, inch and pinch, work day and night to mend his clothes
+and get his food ready, and this is what I get for it. He makes me a
+laughing-stock, talks about me behind my back. Oh, I know!" she added
+hastily, as Millie made a sign of dissent. "He can't deceive me. He
+wants to bring me down to his own level of wickedness, then he'll be
+happy; but he shan't," she cried, the Daughter of the Lord manifesting
+herself. "I'll kill myself first. He shall never have that pleasure, no
+one shall ever be able to say that I let him drag me down.
+
+"I've always done my duty by him," she continued, returning to the
+threadbare phrase that was ever present in her mind. "I've worked
+morning, noon and night to try and keep him respectable, and see how he
+treats me. I'm worse off than a servant, I tell him so and what does he
+do?" she demanded. "Laughs at me," she cried shrilly, answering her own
+question, "and humiliates me before the neighbours. Gets the children to
+call after me, makes----"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Lizzie! You mustn't say that," cried Millie in distress. "I'm
+sure Uncle Joe would never do such a thing. He couldn't," she added with
+conviction.
+
+"Well, they do it," retorted Mrs. Bindle, conscious of a feeling that
+possibly she had gone too far; "only yesterday they did it."
+
+"What did they say?" enquired Millie curiously.
+
+"They said," she paused as if hesitating to repeat what the youth of
+Fenton Street had called after her. Then, as if determined to convict
+Bindle of all the sins possible, she continued, "They called after me
+all the way up Fenton Street----" again she paused.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Lizzie."
+
+"They called 'Mrs. Bindle turns a spindle.'"
+
+Millie bent quickly forward that her involuntary smile might not be
+detected.
+
+"They never call out after him," Mrs. Bindle added, as if that in itself
+were conclusive proof of Bindle's guilt. "And now I must be going,
+Millie," and she rose and once more bent down to gaze where Joseph the
+Second slept the sleep of an easy conscience and a good digestion.
+
+"Bless his little heart," she murmured, for the moment forgetting her
+own troubles in the contemplation of the sleeping babe. "I hope he
+doesn't grow up like his uncle," she added, her thoughts rushing back
+precipitately to their customary channel.
+
+"I'm going to have a talk with Uncle Joe," said Millie, as she followed
+her aunt along the passage, "and then----" she paused.
+
+"You'd talk the hind leg off a donkey before you'd make any impression
+on him," was the ungracious retort. "Good night, Millie, I'm glad you're
+getting on with your cooking," and Mrs. Bindle passed out into the night
+to the solitude of her own thoughts, populated exclusively by Bindle and
+his shortcomings.
+
+
+II
+
+"I haven't told Charley, Uncle Joe, so be careful," whispered Millie, as
+Bindle hung up his hat in the hall.
+
+"'Aven't told 'im wot, Millie?"
+
+"That--that----" she hesitated.
+
+"I get you Steve," he cried, with a knowing wink, "you ain't told 'im
+'ow you're goin' to make yer Aunt Lizzie the silent wife of Fulham."
+
+"Now, Uncle Joe," she admonished with pouting lips, "you promised. You
+will be careful, won't you?" She had spent two hours the previous night
+coaching Bindle in the part he was to play.
+
+"Reg'lar dove I am to-night," he said cheerily. "I could lay an egg,
+only I don't know wot colour it ought to be."
+
+Millie gazed at him for a few seconds in quizzical doubt, then, with a
+shrug of her pretty shoulders, and a pout that was very popular with
+Charley, she turned and led the way into the drawing-room.
+
+Charley Dixon was doing his best to make conversation with his
+aunt-in-law; but Mrs. Bindle's monosyllabic methods proved a serious
+obstacle.
+
+"Now we'll have supper," cried Millie, after Bindle had greeted Charley
+and gazed a little doubtfully at Mrs. Bindle. He seemed on the point of
+making some remark; but apparently thought better of it, instead he
+turned to admire an ornament on the mantelpiece. He had remembered just
+in time.
+
+Millie had spread herself upon the supper. There was a small cold
+chicken that seemed desirous of shrinking within itself; a salad in a
+glass bowl, with a nickel-silver fork and spoon adorned with blue china
+handles; a plate of ham well garnished with parsley; a beef-steak and
+kidney pie, cold, also garnished with parsley; some pressed beef and
+tongue, of a thinness that advertised the professional hand which had
+cut it.
+
+On the sideboard was an infinity of tarts, blanc-mange, stewed fruit and
+custard. With all the recklessness of a young housewife, Millie had
+prepared for four what would have been ample for fourteen.
+
+It was this fact that first attracted Mrs. Bindle's attention. Her keen
+eyes missed nothing. She examined the knives and spoons, identifying
+them as wedding presents. She lifted the silver pepper-castor, a trifle,
+light as air, examined the texture of the tablecloth and felt the
+napkins with an appraising thumb and forefinger, and mentally
+deprecated the lighting of the two pink candles, in silver candlesticks
+with yellow shades, in the centre of the table.
+
+Millie fluttered about, acutely conscious of her responsibilities and
+flushed with anxiety.
+
+"I hope--I hope," she began, addressing her aunt. "I--I hope you will
+like it."
+
+"You must have worked very hard, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle, an unusual
+gentleness in her voice, whereat Millie flushed.
+
+Bindle and Charley were soon at work upon the beef-steak and kidney pie,
+hot potatoes and beans. Bindle had nearly fallen at the first hurdle. In
+the heat of an argument with Charley as to what was the matter with the
+Chelsea football team, he had indiscreetly put a large piece of potato
+into his mouth without realising its temperature. A look of agony
+overspread his features. He was just in the act of making a preliminary
+forward motion to return the potato from whence it came, when Charley,
+with a presence of mind that would have brought tears to Bindle's eyes,
+had they not already been there, indicated the glass of beer in front of
+him.
+
+With a swoop Bindle seized it, raised it to his lips, and cooled the
+heated tuber. Pulling his red silk handkerchief from his breast-pocket,
+he mopped up the tears just as Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon him.
+
+"Don't make me laugh, Charley," he cried with inspiration, "or I'll
+choke," at which Charley laughed in a way that proved him entirely
+devoid of histrionic talent.
+
+"I'll do as much for you one o' these days, Charley," Bindle whispered,
+looking reproachfully at the remains of the potato that had betrayed
+him. "My Gawd! It was 'ot," he muttered under his breath. "Look out for
+yourself an' 'ave beer 'andy."
+
+He turned suddenly to Mrs. Bindle. In his heart there was an
+uncharitable hope that she too might be caught in the toils from which
+he had just escaped; but Mrs. Bindle ate like a book on etiquette. She
+held her knife and fork at the extreme end of the handles, her elbows
+pressed well into her sides, and literally toyed with her food.
+
+After each mouthful, she raised her napkin to her lips, giving the
+impression that it was in constant movement, either to or from her lips.
+
+She took no table risks. She saw to it that every piece of food was
+carefully attached to the fork before she raised it from the plate, and
+never did fork carry a lighter load than hers. After each journey, both
+knife and fork were laid on her plate, the napkin--Mrs. Bindle referred
+to it as a serviette--raised to her unsoiled lips, and she touched
+neither knife nor fork again until her jaws had entirely ceased working.
+
+Between her visits to the kitchen, Millie laboured desperately to
+inveigle her aunt into conversation; but although Mrs. Bindle possessed
+much religious and domestic currency, she had no verbal small change.
+
+During the afternoon, Millie had exhausted domesticity and herself
+alike--and there had been Joseph the Second. Mrs. Bindle did not read,
+they had no common friends, she avoided the pictures, and what she did
+see in the newspapers she so disapproved of as to close that as a
+possible channel of conversation.
+
+"Aunt Lizzie," cried Millie in desperation for something to say, "you
+aren't making a good supper."
+
+"I'm doing very nicely, thank you, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle, who in a
+quarter of an hour had managed to envelop about two square inches of ham
+and three shreds of lettuce.
+
+"You don't like the ham, Aunt Lizzie," protested the hospitable Millie;
+"have some pie."
+
+"It's very nice, thank you, Millie," was the prim reply. "I'm enjoying
+it," and she proceeded to dissect a piece of lettuce to a size that even
+a "prunes and prisms" mouth might have taken without inconvenience.
+
+"Charley," cried Millie presently. "I won't have you talking football
+with Uncle Joe. Talk to Aunt Lizzie."
+
+A moment later she realized her mistake. Bindle returned to his plate,
+Charley looked at his aunt doubtfully, and conversation lay slain.
+
+"Listen," cried Millie who, at the end of five minutes, thought she must
+either say something, or scream. "That's Joey, run up and see, Charley,
+there's a dear"--she knew it was not Joey.
+
+Charley rose dutifully, and once more silence descended upon the table.
+
+"Aunt Lizzie, you _are_ making a poor meal," cried Millie, genuinely
+distressed, as Mrs. Bindle placed her knife and fork at the "all clear"
+angle, although she had eaten less than half what her plate contained.
+
+"I've done very nicely, thank you, Millie, and I've enjoyed it."
+
+Millie sighed. Her eyes wandered from the heavily-laden table to the
+sideboard, and she groaned in spirit. In spite of what Bindle and
+Charley had done, and were doing, there seemed such a lot that required
+to be eaten, and she wondered whether Charley would very much mind
+having cold meat, blanc-mange and jam tarts for the rest of the week.
+
+"It wasn't him, Millie," said Charley, re-entering the room, and
+returning to his plate with the air of one determined to make up for the
+time he had lost in parental solicitude, whilst Bindle pushed his own
+plate from him as a sign that, so far as the first round was concerned,
+he had nothing more to say.
+
+"You're very quiet to-night, Uncle Joe," said Millie, the soul of
+hospitality within her already weeping bitter tears.
+
+"Me?" cried Bindle, starting and looking about him. "I ain't quiet,
+Millie," and then he relapsed once more into silence.
+
+Charley did not seem to notice anything unusual. In his gentle,
+good-natured way he hoped that Millie would not again ask him to talk to
+Aunt Lizzie.
+
+Mrs. Bindle partook, no other word adequately describes the action, of
+an open jam tart with the aid of a spoon and fork, from time to time
+sipping daintily from her glass of lemonade; but she refused all else.
+She had made an excellent meal, she repeatedly assured Millie, and had
+enjoyed it.
+
+Millie found comfort in plying Bindle with dainties. He had received no
+orders to curtail his appetite, so he had decided in his own idiom to
+"let 'em all come"--and they came, tarts and turnovers, fruit-salad and
+blanc-mange, custard and jelly. By the time the cheese and biscuits had
+arrived, he was forced to lean back in his chair and confess himself
+vanquished.
+
+"Not if you was to pay me," he said, as he shook a regretful head.
+
+After the meal, they returned to the drawing-room. Millie showed Mrs.
+Bindle an album of coloured postcards they had collected during their
+honeymoon, whilst Charley wandered about like a restless spirit, missing
+his after-dinner pipe.
+
+"Ain't we goin' to smoke?" Bindle had whispered hoarsely, as they
+entered the drawing-room; but Charley shook a sad and resigned head.
+
+"She mightn't like it," he whispered back, so Bindle seated himself in
+the corner of a plush couch, and wondered how long it would be before
+Mrs. Bindle made a move to go home.
+
+Millie was trying her utmost to make the postcards last as long as
+possible. Charley had paused beside her in his restless strolling about
+the room, and proceeded to recall unimportant happenings at the places
+pictured.
+
+At length the photographs were exhausted, and both Millie and Charley
+began to wonder what was to take their place, when Mrs. Bindle rose,
+announcing that she must be going. Millie pressed her to stay, and
+strove to stifle the thanksgiving in her heart, whilst Charley began to
+count the minutes before he would be able to "light up."
+
+The business of parting, however, occupied time, and it was fully twenty
+minutes later that Bindle and Mrs. Bindle, accompanied by Charley and
+Millie, passed down the narrow little passage towards the hall door.
+
+Another five minutes were occupied in remarks upon the garden and how
+they had enjoyed themselves--and then the final goodnights were uttered.
+
+As his niece kissed him, Bindle muttered, "I been all right, ain't I,
+Millikins?" and she squeezed his arm reassuringly, at which he sighed
+his relief. The tortures he had suffered that evening were as nothing,
+provided Millie were happy.
+
+As the hall door closed, Charley struck a match and lighted his pipe.
+Returning to the drawing-room, he dropped into the easiest of the uneasy
+chairs.
+
+"What's the matter with Uncle Joe to-night, Millie?" he enquired, and
+for answer Millie threw herself upon him, wound her arms round his neck
+and sobbed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Been a pleasant evenin', Lizzie," said Bindle conversationally, as they
+walked towards the nearest tram-stop.
+
+Mrs. Bindle sniffed.
+
+"Nice young chap, Charley," he remarked a moment later. He was
+determined to redeem his promise to Millie.
+
+"What was the matter with you to-night?" she demanded aggressively.
+
+"Matter with me?" he enquired in surprise. "There ain't nothink the
+matter with me, Lizzie, I enjoyed myself fine."
+
+"Yes, sitting all the evening as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth."
+
+"But----" began Bindle.
+
+"Oh, I know you," she interrupted. "You wanted Millie and Charley to
+think it's all my fault and that you're a saint. They should see you in
+your own home," she added.
+
+"But I ain't said nothink," he protested.
+
+"You aren't like that at home," she continued. "There you do nothing but
+blaspheme and talk lewd talk and sneer at Mr. Hearty. Oh! I can see
+through you," she added, "and you needn't think you deceived Millie, or
+Charley. They're not the fools you think them."
+
+Bindle groaned in spirit. He had suffered acutely that evening, mentally
+having had to censor every sentence before uttering it.
+
+"Then look at the way you behaved. Eating like a gormand. You made me
+thoroughly ashamed of you. I could see Millie watching----"
+
+"But she was watchin' to see I 'ad enough to eat," he protested.
+
+"Don't tell me. Any decently refined girl would be disgusted at the way
+you behave. Eating jam tarts with your fingers."
+
+"But wot should I eat 'em with?"
+
+Before she had time to reply, the tram drew up and, following her usual
+custom, Mrs. Bindle made a dart for it, elbowing people right and left.
+She could always be trusted to make sufficient enemies in entering a
+vehicle to last most people for a lifetime.
+
+"But wot should I eat 'em with?" enquired Bindle again when they were
+seated.
+
+"Sssh!" she hissed, conscious that a number of people were looking at
+her, including several who had made acquaintance with the sharpness of
+her elbows.
+
+"But if you ain't to eat jam tarts with yer fingers, 'ow are you goin'
+to get 'em into yer mouth?" he enquired in a hoarse whisper, which was
+easily heard by the greater part of the occupants of the tram. "They
+don't jump," he added.
+
+A ripple of smiles broke out on the faces of most of their
+fellow-passengers.
+
+"_Will_ you be quiet?" hissed Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Mind you don't grow up like that, kid," whispered an amorous youth to a
+full-busted young woman, whose hand he was grasping with interlaced
+fingers.
+
+Mrs. Bindle heard the remark and drew in her lips still further.
+
+"Been gettin' yer face sticky, mate?" enquired a little man sitting next
+to Bindle, in a voice of sympathy.
+
+Bindle turned and gave him a wink.
+
+No sooner had they alighted from the tram at The King's Head, than Mrs.
+Bindle's restraint vanished. All the way to Fenton Street she reviled
+Bindle for humiliating her before other people. She gave full rein to
+the anger that had been simmering within her all the evening. Millie
+should be told of his conduct. Charley should learn to hate him, and
+Little Joey to execrate the very mention of his name.
+
+"But you shouldn't go a-jabbin' yer elbows in people's----" Bindle
+paused for a word sufficiently delicate for Mrs. Bindle's ears and
+which, at the same time, would leave no doubt as to the actual portion
+of the anatomy to which he referred.
+
+"I'll jab my elbows into you, if you're not careful," was the
+uncompromising response. "I'm referring to the tarts."
+
+And Bindle made a bolt for it.
+
+"Now this all comes through tryin' to sit on a safety-valve," he
+muttered. "Mrs. B. 'as got to blow-orf some'ow, or she'd bust."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MRS. BINDLE'S DISCOVERY
+
+
+I
+
+On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Bindle went to chapel to engage in the
+weekly temperance service. As temperance meetings always engendered in
+Mrs. Bindle the missionary spirit, Bindle selected Wednesday for what he
+called his "night out."
+
+If he got home early, it was to encounter Mrs. Bindle's prophetic views
+as to the hereafter of those who spent their leisure in gin-palaces.
+
+At first Mrs. Bindle had shown her resentment by waiting up until Bindle
+returned; but as he made that return later each Wednesday, she had at
+last capitulated, and it became no longer necessary for him to walk the
+streets until two o'clock in the morning, in order to slip upstairs
+unchallenged as to where he expected to go when he died.
+
+One Wednesday night, as he was on his way home, whistling "Bubbles" at
+the stretch of his powers, he observed the figure of a girl standing
+under a lamp-post, her head bent, her shoulders moving convulsively.
+
+"'Ullo--'ullo!" he cried. "Wot's the matter now?"
+
+At Bindle's words she gave him a fleeting glance, then, turning once
+more to the business on hand, sobbed the louder.
+
+"Wot's wrong, my dear?" Bindle enquired, regarding her with a puzzled
+expression. "Oo's been 'urting you?"
+
+"I'm--I'm afraid," she sobbed.
+
+"Afraid! There ain't nothink to be afraid of when Joe Bindle's about.
+Wot you afraid of?"
+
+"I'm--I'm afraid to go home," sobbed the girl.
+
+"Afraid to go 'ome," repeated Bindle. "Why?"
+
+"M-m-m-m-mother."
+
+"Wot's up with 'er? She ill?"
+
+"She--she'll kill me."
+
+"Ferocious ole bird," he muttered. Then to the girl, "'Ere, you didn't
+ought to be out at this time o' night, a young gal like you. Why, it's
+gettin' on for twelve. Wot's wrong with Ma?"
+
+"She'll kill me. I darsen't go home." She looked up at Bindle, a
+pathetic figure, with twitching mouth and frightened eyes. Then,
+controlling her sobs, she told her story.
+
+She had been to Richmond with a girl friend, and some boys had taken
+them for a run on their motorcycles. One of the cycles had developed
+engine-trouble and, instead of being home by ten, it was half-past
+eleven before she got to Putney Bridge Station.
+
+"I darsen't go home," she wailed, as she finished her story. "Mother'll
+kill me. She said she would last time. I know she will," and again she
+began to cry, this time without any effort to shield her tear-stained
+face. Fear had rendered her regardless of appearances.
+
+"'Ere, I'll take you 'ome," cried Bindle, with the air of a man who has
+arrived at a mighty decision. "If Mrs. B. gets to 'ear of it, there'll
+be an 'ell of a row though," he muttered.
+
+The girl appeared undecided.
+
+"You won't let her hurt me?" she asked, with the appealing look of a
+frightened child.
+
+"Well, I can't start scrappin' with your ma, my dear," he said
+uncertainly; "but I'll do my best. My missis is a bit of a scrapper, you
+see, an' I've learned 'ow to 'andle 'em. Of course, if she liked 'ymns
+an' salmon, it'd be sort of easier," he mused, "not that there's much
+chance of gettin' a tin' o' salmon at this time o' night."
+
+The girl, unaware of his habit of trading on Mrs. Bindle's fondness for
+tinned salmon and hymn tunes, looked at him with widened eyes.
+
+"No," he continued, "it's got to be tack this time. 'Ere, come along,
+young un, we can't stay 'ere all night. Where jer live?"
+
+She indicated with a nod the end of the street in which they stood.
+
+"Well, 'ere goes," he cried, starting off, the girl following. As they
+proceeded, her steps became more and more reluctant, until at last she
+stopped dead.
+
+"'Wot's up now?" he enquired, looking over his shoulder.
+
+"I darsen't go in," she said tremulously. "I d-d-darsen't."
+
+"'Ere, come along," cried Bindle persuasively. "Your ma can't eat you.
+Which 'ouse is it?"
+
+"That one." She nodded in the direction of a gate opposite a lamp-post,
+fear and misery in her eyes.
+
+"Come along, my dear. I won't let 'er 'urt you," and, taking her gently
+by the arm, he led her towards the gate. Here, however, the girl stopped
+once more and clung convulsively to the railings, half-dead with fright.
+
+Opening the gate, Bindle walked up the short tiled path and, reaching
+up, grasped the knocker. As he did so, the door opened with such
+suddenness that he lurched forward, almost into the arms of a stout
+woman with a fiery face and angry eyes.
+
+From Bindle her gaze travelled to the shrinking figure clinging to the
+railings.
+
+"You old villain!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with passion, making a
+dive at Bindle, who, dodging nimbly, took cover behind a moth-eaten
+evergreen in the centre of the diminutive front garden.
+
+"You just let me catch you, keeping my gal out like this, and you old
+enough to be her father, too. As for you, my lady, you just wait till I
+get you indoors. I'll show you, coming home at this time o' night."
+
+She made another dive at Bindle; but her bulk was against her, and he
+found no difficulty in evading the attack.
+
+"What d'you mean by it?" she demanded, as she glared at him across the
+top of the evergreen, "and 'er not seventeen yet. For two pins I'd have
+you taken up."
+
+"'Ere, old 'ard, missis," cried Bindle, keeping a wary eye upon his
+antagonist. "I ain't wot you think. I'm a dove, that's wot I am, an'
+'ere are you a-playin' chase-me-Charlie round this 'ere----"
+
+"Wait till I get you," she shouted, drowning Bindle's protest. "I'll
+give you dove, keeping my gal out all hours. You just wait. I'll show
+you, or my name ain't Annie Brunger."
+
+She made another dive at him; but, by a swift movement, he once more
+placed the diminutive evergreen between them.
+
+"Mother!--mother!" The girl rushed forward and clung convulsively to her
+mother's arm. "Mother, don't!"
+
+"You wait, my lady," cried Mrs. Brunger, shaking off her daughter's
+hand. "I'll settle with you when I've finished with him, the beauty.
+I'll show him!"
+
+The front door of the house on the right slowly opened, and a
+curl-papered head peeped out. Two doors away on the other side a window
+was raised, and a man's bald head appeared. The hounds of scandal
+scented blood.
+
+"Mother!" The girl shook her mother's arm desperately. "Mother, don't!
+This gentleman came home with me because I was afraid."
+
+"What's that?" Mrs. Brunger turned to her daughter, who stood with
+pleading eyes clutching her arm, her own fears momentarily forgotten.
+
+"He saw me crying and said he'd come home with me because----Oh, mother,
+don't!--don't!"
+
+Two windows on the opposite side of the way were noisily pushed up, and
+heads appeared.
+
+"'Ere, look 'ere, missis," cried Bindle, seizing his opportunity. "It's
+no use a-chasin' me round this 'ere gooseberry bush. I told you I ain't
+no lion. I come to smooth things over. A sort o' dove, you know."
+
+"Mother!--mother!" Again the girl clutched her mother's arm, shaking it
+in her excitement. "I was afraid to come home, honestly I was, and--and
+he saw me crying and--and said----" Sobs choked her further utterance.
+
+"Come inside, the pair of you." Mrs. Brunger had at length become
+conscious of the interest of her neighbours. "Some folks never can mind
+their own business," she added, as a thrust at the inquisitive. Turning
+her back on the delinquent pair, she marched in at the door, along the
+short passage to the kitchen at the farther end, where the gas was
+burning.
+
+Bindle followed her confidently, and stood, cap in hand, by the
+kitchen-table, looking about him with interest. The girl, however,
+remained flattened against the side of the passage, as if anxious to
+efface herself.
+
+"Elsie, if you don't come in, I'll fetch you," announced the mother
+threateningly.
+
+Elsie slid along the wall and round the door-post, making for the corner
+of the room farthest from her mother. There she stood with terrified
+eyes fixed upon her parent.
+
+"Now, then, what have you two got to say for yourselves?" Mrs. Brunger
+looked from Bindle to her daughter, with the air of one who is quite
+prepared to assume the responsibilities of Providence.
+
+"Well, it was like this 'ere," said Bindle easily. "I see 'er," he
+jerked his thumb in the direction of the girl, "cryin' under a lamp-post
+down the street, so I asks 'er wot's up."
+
+Bindle paused, and Mrs. Brunger turned to her daughter with a look of
+interrogation.
+
+"I--I----" began the girl, then she, too, stopped abruptly.
+
+"You've been with that hussy Mabel Warnes again." There was accusation
+and conviction in Mrs. Brunger's tone. "Don't you deny it," she
+continued, although the girl made no sign of doing so. "I warned you
+what I'd do to you if you went out with that fast little baggage again,
+and I'll do it, so help me God, I will." Her voice was rising angrily.
+
+"'Ere, look 'ere, missis----" began Bindle.
+
+"My name's Brunger--Mrs. Brunger," she added, to prevent any possibility
+of misconception. "I thought I told you once."
+
+"You did," said Bindle cheerfully. "Now, look 'ere," he continued
+persuasively, "we're only young once."
+
+Mrs. Brunger snorted disdainfully; and the look she gave her daughter
+caused the girl to shrink closer to the wall.
+
+"Rare cove I was for gettin' 'ome late," remarked Bindle reminiscently.
+
+"More shame you," was the uncompromising retort.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if you was a bit late now an' again when you was a
+gal," he continued, looking up at Mrs. Brunger with critical
+appreciation--"or else the chaps didn't know wot was wot," he added.
+
+"Two blacks don't make a white," was Mrs. Brunger's obscure comment.
+
+"Yes; but a gal can't 'elp bein' pretty," continued Bindle, following
+the line of his reasoning. "Now, if you'd been like some ma's, no one
+wouldn't 'ave wanted to keep 'er out."
+
+"Who are you getting at?" demanded Mrs. Brunger; but there was no
+displeasure in her voice.
+
+"It's only the pretty ones wot gets kept out late," continued Bindle
+imperturbably, his confidence rising at the signs of a weakening
+defence. "Now, with a ma like you," he paused eloquently, "it was bound
+to 'appen. You didn't ought to be too 'ard on the gal, although, mind
+you," he said, turning to the culprit, "she didn't ought to go out with
+gals against her ma's wishes, an' she's goin' to be a good gal in
+future--ain't that so, my dear?"
+
+The girl nodded her head vigorously.
+
+"There, you see," continued Bindle, turning once more to Mrs. Brunger,
+whose face was showing marked signs of relaxation. "Now, if I was a
+young chap again," he continued, looking from mother to daughter, "well,
+anythink might 'appen."
+
+"Go on with you, do." Mrs. Brunger's good humour was returning.
+
+"Well, I suppose I must," said Bindle, with a grin. "It's about time I
+was 'opping it."
+
+His announcement seemed to arouse the girl. Hitherto she had stood a
+silent witness, puzzled at the strange turn events were taking; but now
+she realised that her protector was about to leave her to the enemy. She
+started forward, and clutched Bindle by the arm.
+
+"Don't go!--oh, don't go! I----" She stopped suddenly, and looked across
+at her mother.
+
+"You ain't a-goin' to be too 'ard on 'er?" said Bindle, interpreting the
+look.
+
+Mrs. Brunger looked irresolute. Her anger found its source in the
+mother-instinct of protection rather than in bad temper. Bindle was
+quick to take advantage of her indecision. With inspiration he turned to
+the girl.
+
+"Now, you mustn't worry yer ma, my dear. She's got quite enough to see
+to without bein' bothered by a pretty little 'ead like yours. Now, if
+she forgives you, will you promise 'er not to be late again, an' not to
+go with that gal wot she don't like?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes! I won't, mums, honestly." She looked appealingly at her
+mother, and saw something in her face that was reassuring, for a moment
+later she was clinging almost fiercely to her mother's arm.
+
+"You must come in one Saturday evening and see my husband," said Mrs.
+Brunger a few minutes later, as Bindle fumbled with the latch of the
+hall door. "He's on _The Daily Age_, and is only home a-Saturday
+nights."
+
+"Oh, do, _please_!" cried the girl, smiles having chased all but the
+marks of tears from her face, and Bindle promised that he would.
+
+"Now, if Mrs. B. was to 'ear of these little goin's on," he muttered, as
+he walked towards Fenton Street, "there'd be an 'ell of a row. Mrs. B.'s
+a good woman an', bein' a good woman, she's bound to think the worst,"
+and he swung open the gate that led to his "Little Bit of 'Eaven."
+
+
+II
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Stitchley."
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Bindle. I 'ope I 'aven't come at a inconvenient
+time."
+
+"No, please come in," said Mrs. Bindle, with almost geniality, as she
+stood aside to admit her caller, then, closing the front-door behind
+her, she opened that leading to the parlour.
+
+"Will you just wait here a minute, Mrs. Stitchley, and I'll pull up the
+blind?" she said.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley smirked and smiled, whilst Mrs. Bindle made her way, with
+amazing dexterity, through the maze of things with which the room was
+crammed, in the direction of the window.
+
+A moment later, she pulled up the dark-green blind, which was always
+kept drawn so that the carpet might not fade, and the sunlight shuddered
+into the room. It revealed a grievous medley of antimacassared chairs,
+stools, photograph-frames, pictures and ornaments, all of which were
+very dear to Mrs. Bindle's heart.
+
+"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Stitchley?" enquired Mrs. Bindle primly. Mrs.
+Stitchley was inveterate in her attendance at the Alton Road Chapel;
+Bindle had once referred to her as "a chapel 'og."
+
+"Thank you, my dear, thank you," said Mrs. Stitchley, whose manner
+exuded friendliness.
+
+She looked about her dubiously, and it was Mrs. Bindle who settled
+matters by indicating a chair of stamped-plush, the seat of which rose
+hard and high in the centre. Over the back was an ecru antimacassar,
+tied with a pale-blue ribbon. After a moment's hesitation, Mrs.
+Stitchley entrusted it with her person.
+
+"It's a long time since I see you, Mrs. Bindle." They had met three
+evenings previously at chapel.
+
+Mrs. Bindle smiled feebly. She always suspected Mrs. Stitchley of
+surreptitious drinking, in spite of the fact that she belonged to the
+chapel Temperance Society. Mrs. Stitchley's red nose, coupled with the
+passion she possessed for chewing cloves, had made her fellow-worshipper
+suspicious.
+
+"Wot a nice room," Mrs. Stitchley looked about her appreciatively, "so
+genteel, and 'ow refined."
+
+Mrs. Bindle smirked.
+
+"I was sayin' to Stitchley only yesterday mornin' at breakfast--he was
+'avin' sausages, 'e bein' so fond of 'em--'Mrs. Bindle 'as taste,' I
+says, '_and_ refinement.'"
+
+Mrs. Bindle, who had seated herself opposite her visitor, drew in her
+chin and folded her hands before her, with the air of one who is
+receiving only what she knows to be her due.
+
+There was a slight pause.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Stitchley, with a sigh, "I was always one for
+refinement _and_ respectability."
+
+Mrs. Bindle said nothing. She was wondering why Mrs. Stitchley had
+called. Although she would not have put it into words, or even allow it
+to find form in her thoughts, she knew Mrs. Stitchley to be a woman to
+whom gossip was the breath of life.
+
+"Now you're wonderin' why I've come, my dear," continued Mrs. Stitchley,
+who always grew more friendly as her calls lengthened, "but it's a
+dooty. I says to Stitchley this mornin', 'There's that poor, dear Mrs.
+Bindle a-livin' in innocence of the way in which she's bein' vilated.'"
+Mrs. Stitchley was sometimes a little loose in the way she constructed
+her sentences and the words she selected.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's lips began to assume a hard line.
+
+"I don't understand, Mrs. Stitchley," she said.
+
+"Jest wot I says to Stitchley, 'She don't know, the poor lamb,' I says,
+''ow she's bein' deceived, 'ow she's----'" Mrs. Stitchley paused, not
+from any sense of the dramatic; but because of a violent hiccough that
+had assailed her.
+
+"Excuse me, mum--Mrs. Bindle," she corrected herself; "but I always was
+a one for 'iccups, an' when it ain't 'iccups it's spasms. Stitchley was
+sayin' to me only yesterday, no it wasn't, it was the day before,
+that----"
+
+"Won't you tell me what you were going to?" said Mrs. Bindle. She knew
+of old how rambling were Mrs. Stitchley's methods of narration.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure," and she nodded until the jet ornament in her
+black bonnet seemed to have become palsied. "Well, my dear, it's like
+this. As I was sayin' to Stitchley this mornin', 'I can't see poor Mrs.
+Bindle deceived by that monster.' I see through 'im that evenin',
+a-turnin' your 'appy party into----" she paused for a simile--"into wot
+'e turned it into," she added with inspiration.
+
+"Oh! the wickedness of this world, Mrs. Bindle. Oh! the sin and error."
+She cast up her bleary, watery blue eyes, and gazed at the yellow paper
+flycatcher, and once more the jet ornament began to shiver.
+
+"Please tell me what it is, Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs. Bindle, conscious
+of a sense of impending disaster.
+
+"The wicked man, the cruel, heartless creature; but they're all the
+same, as I tell Stitchley, and him with a wife like you, Mrs. Bindle, to
+carry on with a young Jezebel like that, to----"
+
+"Carry on with a young Jezebel!"
+
+Mrs. Bindle's whole manner had changed. Her uprightness seemed to have
+become emphasised, and the grim look about her mouth had hardened into
+one of menace. Her eyes, hard as two pieces of steel, seemed to pierce
+through her visitor's brain. "What do you mean?" she demanded.
+
+Instinctively Mrs. Stitchley recoiled.
+
+"As I says to Stitchley----" she began, when Mrs. Bindle broke in.
+
+"Never mind Mr. Stitchley," she snapped. "Tell me what you mean."
+
+Mrs. Stitchley looked hurt. Things were not going exactly as she had
+planned. In the retailing of scandal, she was an artist, and she
+constructed her periods with a view to their dramatic effect upon her
+listener.
+
+"Yes," she continued reminiscently, "'e's been a good 'usbindt 'as
+Stitchley. Never no gallivanting with other females. 'E's always said:
+'Matilda, my dear, there won't never be another woman for me.' His very
+words, Mrs. Bindle, I assure _you_," and Mrs. Stitchley preened herself
+like a moth-eaten peacock.
+
+"You were saying----" began Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure," said Mrs. Stitchley; "but we all 'ave our
+crosses to bear. The Lord will give you strength, Mrs. Bindle, just as
+He gave me strength when Stitchley lorst 'is leg. 'The Lord giveth and
+the Lord taketh away,'" she added enigmatically.
+
+"Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs. Bindle, rising with an air of decision, "I
+insist on your telling me what you mean."
+
+"Ah! my dear," said Mrs. Stitchley, with an emotion in her voice that
+she usually kept for funerals, "I knew 'ow it would be. I says to
+Stitchley, 'Stitchley,' I says, 'that poor, dear woman will suffer. She
+was made for sufferin'. She's one of them gentle, tender lambs, that's
+trodden underfoot by the serpent's tooth of man's lust; but she will
+bear 'er cross.' Them was my very words, Mrs. Bindle," she added,
+indifferent to the mixture of metaphor.
+
+Mrs. Bindle looked at her visitor helplessly. Her face was very white;
+but she realised Mrs. Stitchley's loquacity was undammable.
+
+"A-takin' 'ome a young gal at two o'clock in the mornin', and then bein'
+asked in by 'er mother--and 'er father away at 'is work every night--and
+'er not mor'n seventeen, and all the neighbours with their 'eads out of
+the windows, and 'er a-screechin' and askin' of 'er mother not to 'it
+'er, and 'er sayin' 'Wait 'till I get you, my gal,' and callin' 'im an
+ole villain. 'E ought to be took up. I says to Stitchley, 'Stitchley,' I
+says, 'that man ought to be took up, an' it's only because of Lord
+George that 'e ain't.'"
+
+"What do you mean?" Mrs. Bindle made an effort to control herself. "Who
+was it that took some one home at two o'clock in the morning?"
+
+"You poor lamb," croaked Mrs. Stitchley, gazing up at Mrs. Bindle, whose
+unlamblike qualities were never more marked than at that moment. "You
+poor lamb. You're being deceived, Mrs. Bindle, cruelly and wickedly
+vilated. Your 'usbindt's carrying on with a young gal wot might 'ave
+been 'is daughter. Oh! the wickedness of this world, the----"
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+Mrs. Stitchley started back. The words seemed almost to hit her in the
+face. She blinked her eyes uncertainly, as she looked at Mrs. Bindle,
+the embodiment of an outraged wife and a vengeful fury.
+
+"I'm afraid I must be going, my dear," said Mrs. Stitchley; "but I felt
+I ought to tell you."
+
+"Not until you've told me everything," said Mrs. Bindle, with decision,
+as she moved towards the door, "and you don't leave this room until
+you've explained what you mean."
+
+Mrs. Stitchley turned round in her chair as Mrs. Bindle passed across
+the room, surprise and fear in her eyes.
+
+"Lord a mercy me!" she cried. "Don't ee take on like that, Mrs. Bindle.
+'E ain't worth it."
+
+Then Mrs. Bindle proceeded to make it abundantly clear to Mrs. Stitchley
+that she required the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
+without unnecessary circumlocution, verbiage, or obscuring metaphor.
+
+At the end of five minutes she had reduced her visitor to a state of
+tearful compliance.
+
+At first her periods halted; but she soon got into her stride and swung
+along with obvious enjoyment.
+
+"My sister-in-law, not as she is my sister-in-law regler, Stitchley's
+father 'avin' married twice, 'is second bein' a widow with five of 'er
+own, an' 'er not twenty-nine at the time, reckless, I calls it. As I was
+sayin', Mrs. Coggles, 'er name's enough to give you a pain, an' the
+state of 'er 'ome, my dear----" Mrs. Stitchley raised her eyes to the
+ceiling as if words failed her.
+
+"Well," she continued after a momentary pause, during which Mrs. Bindle
+looked at her without moving a muscle, "as I was sayin', Mrs.
+Coggles"--she shuddered slightly as she pronounced the name--"she lives
+in Arloes Road, No. 9, pink tie-ups to 'er curtains she 'as, an' that
+flashy in 'er dress. Well, well!" she concluded, as if Christian
+charity had come to her aid.
+
+"She told me all about it. She was jest a-goin' to bed, bein' late on
+account of 'Ector, that's 'er seventh, ten months old an' still at the
+breast, disgustin' I calls it, 'avin' wot she thought was convulsions,
+an' 'earin' the row an' 'ubbub, she goes to the door an' sees
+everythink, an' that's the gospel truth, Mrs. Bindle, if I was to be
+struck down like Sulphira."
+
+She then proceeded to give a highly elaborated and ornate account of
+Bindle's adventure of some six weeks previously. She accompanied her
+story with a wealth of detail, most of which was inaccurate, coupled
+with the assurance that the Lord and Mrs. Stitchley would undoubtedly do
+all in their power to help Mrs. Bindle in her hour of trial.
+
+Finally, Mrs. Stitchley found herself walking down the little tiled path
+that led to the Bindles' outer gate, in her heart a sense of great
+injustice.
+
+"Never so much as bite or sup," she mumbled, as she turned out of the
+gate, taking care to leave it open, "and me a-tellin' 'er all wot I told
+'er. I've come across meanness in my time; but I never been refused a
+cup-o'-tea, an' me fatiguing myself something cruel to go an' tell 'er.
+I don't wonder he took up with that bit of a gal."
+
+That night she confided in her husband. "Stitchley," she said, "there
+ain't never smoke without fire, you mark my words," and Stitchley,
+glancing up from his newspaper, enquired what the 'ell she was gassing
+about; but she made no comment beyond emphasising, once more, that he
+was to mark her words.
+
+That afternoon, Mrs. Bindle worked with a vigour unusual even in her.
+She attacked the kitchen fire, hurled into the sink a flat-iron that had
+the temerity to get too hot, scrubbed boards that required no scrubbing,
+washed linoleum that was spotless, blackleaded where to blacklead was
+like painting the lily. In short, she seemed determined to exhaust her
+energies and her anger upon the helpless and inanimate things about her.
+
+From time to time there burst from her closed lips a sound as of one who
+has difficulty in holding back her pent-up feelings.
+
+At length, having cleaned everything that was cleanable, she prepared a
+cup-of-tea, which she drank standing. Then, removing her apron and
+taking her bonnet from the dresser-drawer, she placed it upon her head
+and adjusted the strings beneath her chin.
+
+Without waiting for any other garment, she left the house and made
+direct for Arloes Road.
+
+Twice she walked its length, subjecting to a careful scrutiny the house
+occupied by the Brungers, noting the windows with great care, and
+finding in them little to criticise. Then she returned to Fenton Street.
+
+The fact of having viewed the actual scene of Bindle's perfidy seemed to
+corroborate Mrs. Stitchley's story. Before the storm was to be permitted
+to burst, however, Mrs. Bindle intended to make assurance doubly sure
+by, as she regarded it in her own mind, "catching him at it."
+
+That night, she selected for her evening reading the chapter in the
+Bible which tells of the plagues of Egypt. Temporarily she saw herself
+in the roll of an outraged Providence, whilst for the part of Pharaoh
+she had cast Bindle, who, unaware of his impending doom, was explaining
+to Ginger at The Yellow Ostrich that a bigamist ought to be let off
+because "'e must be mad to 'ave done it."
+
+
+III
+
+Mrs. Bindle awaited the coming of Saturday evening with a grimness that
+caused Bindle more than once to regard her curiously. "There's somethink
+on the 'andle," he muttered prophetically; but as Mrs. Bindle made no
+sign and, furthermore, as she set before him his favourite dishes, he
+allowed speculation to become absorbed in appetite and enjoyment.
+
+It was characteristic of Mrs. Bindle that, Bindle being more than
+usually under a cloud, she should take extra care in the preparation of
+his meals. It was her way of emphasising the difference between them; he
+the erring husband, she the perfect wife.
+
+"I shan't be in to supper to-night, Lizzie," Bindle announced casually
+on the evening of what Mrs. Bindle had already decided was to be her day
+of wrath. He picked up his bowler-hat preparatory to making one of his
+lightning exits.
+
+"Where are you going?" she demanded, hoping to trap him in a lie.
+
+"When you gets yerself up dossy an' says you're goin' to chapel," he
+remarked, edging towards the door, "I says nothink at all, bein' a
+trustin' 'usband; so when I gets myself up ditto an' says I ain't goin'
+to chapel, you didn't ought to say nothink either, Mrs. B. Wot's sauce
+for the goose is----"
+
+"You're a bad, black-hearted man, Bindle, and you know it."
+
+The intensity of feeling with which the words were uttered surprised
+him.
+
+"Don't you think you can throw dust----" She stopped suddenly, then
+concluded, "You'd better be careful."
+
+"I am, Mrs. B.," he replied cheerily, "careful _as_ careful."
+
+Bindle had fallen into a habit of "dropping in" upon the Brungers on
+Saturday evenings, and for this purpose he had what he described as "a
+wash an' brush-up." This resolved itself into an entire change of
+raiment, as well as the customary "rinse" at the kitchen sink. This in
+itself confirmed Mrs. Stitchley's story.
+
+"Well, s'long," said Bindle, as he opened the kitchen door. "Keep the
+'ome fires burnin'," and with that he was gone.
+
+Bindle had learned from past experience that the more dramatic his exit
+the less likelihood there was of Mrs. Bindle scoring the final
+dialectical point.
+
+This evening, however, she had other and weightier matters for
+thought--and action. No sooner had the kitchen door closed than, moving
+swiftly across to the dresser, she pulled open a drawer, and drew out
+her dark brown mackintosh and bonnet. With swift, deft movements she
+drew on the one, and tied the strings of the other beneath her chin.
+Then, without waiting to look in the mirror over the mantelpiece, she
+passed into the passage and out of the hall door.
+
+She was just in time to see Bindle disappear round the corner. Without a
+moment's hesitation she followed.
+
+Unconscious that Mrs. Bindle, like Nemesis, was dogging his steps,
+Bindle continued his way until finally he turned into Arloes Road. On
+reaching the second lamp-post he gave vent to a peculiarly shrill
+whistle. As he opened the gate that led to a neat little house, the
+front door opened, and a young girl ran down the path and clasped his
+arm. It was obvious that she had been listening for the signal. A moment
+later they entered the house together.
+
+For a few seconds Mrs. Bindle stood at the end of the road, staring at
+the door that had closed behind them. Her face was white and set, and a
+grey line of grimness marked the spot where her lips had disappeared.
+She had noted that the girl was pretty, with fair hair that clung about
+her head in wanton little tendrils and, furthermore, that it was bound
+with a broad band of light green ribbon.
+
+"The villain!" she muttered between set teeth, as she turned and
+proceeded to retrace her steps. "I'll show him."
+
+Arrived back at Fenton Street, she went straight upstairs and proceeded
+to make an elaborate toilet. A little more than an hour later the front
+door once more closed behind her, and Mrs. Bindle proceeded upon her
+way, buttoning her painfully tight gloves, conscious that sartorially
+she was a triumph of completeness.
+
+
+IV
+
+"An' 'as 'er Nibs been a good gal all the week?" Bindle paused in the
+act of raising a glass of ale to his lips.
+
+"I have, mums, haven't I?" Elsie Brunger broke in, without giving her
+mother a chance to reply.
+
+Mrs. Brunger nodded. The question had caught her at a moment when her
+mouth was overfull of fried plaice and potatoes.
+
+"That's the ticket," said Bindle approvingly. "No bein' out late an'
+gettin' 'ome with the milk, or"--he paused impressively--"I gets another
+gal, see?"
+
+By this time Mrs. Brunger had reduced the plaice and potatoes to
+conversational proportions.
+
+"She's been helping me a lot in the house, too," she said from above a
+white silk blouse that seemed determined to show how much there really
+was of Mrs. Brunger.
+
+Elsie looked triumphantly across the supper-table at Bindle.
+
+"That's a good gal," said Bindle approvingly.
+
+"You've done her a lot of good, Mr. Bindle," said Mrs. Brunger, "and me
+and George are grateful, ain't we, George?"
+
+Mr. Brunger, a heavy-faced man with sad, lustreless eyes and a sallow
+skin, nodded. He was a man to whom speech came with difficulty, but on
+this occasion his utterance was constricted by a fish-bone lodged
+somewhere in the neighbourhood of the root of his tongue.
+
+"Wonderful 'ow all the gals take to me," remarked Bindle. "Chase me
+round gooseberry bushes, they do; anythink to get me."
+
+"You go on with you, do," laughed Mrs. Brunger. "How was I to know?"
+
+"I said I was a dove. You 'eard me, didn't you, Fluffy?" he demanded,
+turning to Elsie.
+
+"I won't be called Fluffy," she cried, in mock indignation. "You know I
+don't like it."
+
+"The man who goes about doin' wot a woman says she likes ain't goin' to
+get much jam," remarked Bindle oracularly.
+
+"Now, let's get cleared away, mother," remarked Mr. Brunger, speaking
+for the first time.
+
+"Oh, dad! don't you love your dominoes?" cried Elsie, jumping up and
+giving him a hug. "All right, mums and I will soon sound the 'All
+clear.' Come along, uncle, you butle." This to Bindle.
+
+Amidst much chatter and laughter the table was cleared, the red cloth
+spread in place of the white, and the domino-box reached down from the
+kitchen mantelpiece. The serious business of the evening had begun.
+
+Mr. Brunger had only one evening a week at home, and this he liked to
+divide between his family and his favourite game, giving the major part
+of his attention to the game.
+
+At one time he had been in the habit of asking in some friend or
+acquaintance to join him; but, since the arrival of Bindle, it had
+become an understood thing that the same quartette should meet each
+Saturday evening.
+
+Mrs. Brunger would make a pretence of crocheting. The product possessed
+one thing in common with the weaving of Penelope, in that it never
+seemed to make any appreciable progress towards completion.
+
+Mr. Brunger devoted himself to the rigours of the game, and Elsie would
+flutter between the two players, bursting, but never daring, to give the
+advice that her superior knowledge made valuable.
+
+Bindle kept the party amused, that is, except Mr. Brunger, who was too
+wrapped up in the bone parallelograms before him to be conscious of
+anything else.
+
+Elsie would as soon have thought of missing her Sunday dinner as those
+Saturday evenings, and Mrs. Brunger soon found that a new and powerful
+weapon had been thrust into her hand.
+
+"Very well, you go to bed at seven on Saturday," she would say, which
+was inevitably followed by an "Oh, mums!" of contrition and docility.
+
+"Out! You're beaten, uncle," cried Elsie, clapping her hands, and
+enjoying the look of mock mortification with which Bindle regarded the
+dominoes before him.
+
+Mr. Brunger leaned back in his chair, an expression of mild triumph
+modifying his heavily-jowled countenance. It was remarkable how
+consistently Mr. Brunger was victor.
+
+At that moment a loud and peremptory rat-tat-tat sounded down the
+passage.
+
+"Now, I wonder who that is." Mrs. Brunger put down her crochet upon the
+table and rose.
+
+"Don't you bring anyone in here, mother," ordered Mr. Brunger, fearful
+that his evening was to be spoiled, as he began to mix the dominoes.
+There was no music so dear to his soul as their click-clack, as they
+brushed shoulders with one another.
+
+Mrs. Brunger left the room and, carefully closing the door behind her,
+passed along the short passage and opened the door.
+
+"I've come for my husband!"
+
+On the doorstep stood Mrs. Bindle, grim as Fate. Her face was white, her
+eyes hard, and her mouth little more than indicated by a line of shadow
+between her closely pressed lips. The words seemed to strike Mrs.
+Brunger dumb.
+
+"Your--your husband?" she repeated at length.
+
+"Yes, my 'usband." Mrs. Bindle's diction was losing its purity and
+precision under the stress of great emotion. "I know 'e's here. Don't
+you deny it. I saw 'im come. Oh, you wicked woman!"
+
+Mrs. Brunger blinked in her bewilderment. She was taken by surprise at
+the suddenness of the assault; but her temper was rising under this
+insulting and unprovoked attack.
+
+"What's that you call me?" she demanded.
+
+"Taking a woman's lawful wedded 'usband----" began Mrs. Bindle, when she
+was interrupted by Mrs. Brunger.
+
+"Here, come in," she cried, mindful that inside the house only those on
+either side could hear, whereas on the doorstep their conversation would
+be the property of the whole street.
+
+Mrs. Bindle followed Mrs. Brunger into the parlour. For a moment the two
+women were silent, whilst Mrs. Brunger found the matches, lighted the
+gas, and lowered the blind.
+
+"Now, what's the matter with you? What's your trouble?" demanded Mrs.
+Brunger, with suppressed passion. "Out with it."
+
+"I want my 'usband," repeated Mrs. Bindle, a little taken aback by the
+fierceness of the onslaught.
+
+"An' what have I got to do with your husband, I should like to know?"
+
+"He's here. You're encouraging him, leading him away from----" Mrs.
+Bindle paused.
+
+"Leadin' him away from what?" demanded Mrs. Brunger.
+
+"From me!"
+
+"Leadin' him away, am I?--leadin' him away, I think you said?" Mrs.
+Brunger placed a hand on either hip and thrust her face forward, causing
+Mrs. Bindle involuntarily to start back.
+
+"Oh! you needn't be afraid. I'm not goin' to hit you. Leadin' him away
+was what you said." Mrs. Brunger paused dramatically, and leaned back
+slightly, as if to get a more comprehensive view of her antagonist.
+"Well, he must be a pretty damn short-sighted fool to want leadin' away
+from a thing like you. I'd run hell-hard if I was him."
+
+The biting scorn of the words, the insultingly contemptuous tone in
+which they were uttered, for a moment seemed to daze Mrs. Bindle; but
+only for a breathing space.
+
+Making a swift recovery, she turned upon her antagonist a stream of
+accusation and reproach.
+
+She told how a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel had witnessed
+the return of Bindle the night of the altercation in the front garden.
+She accused mother and daughter of unthinkable crimes, bringing
+Scriptural quotation to her aid.
+
+She confused Fulham and Hammersmith with Sodom and Gomorrah. She called
+upon an all-seeing Providence to purge the district in general, and
+Arloes Road in particular, of its pestilential populace.
+
+She traced the descent of Mrs. Brunger down generations of infamy and
+sin. She threatened her with punishment in this world and the next. She
+told of Bindle's neglect and wickedness, and cast him out into the
+tooth-gnashing darkness. She trampled him under foot, arranged that
+Providence should spurn him and his associates, and consign them all to
+eternal and fiery damnation.
+
+Gradually she worked herself up into a frenzy of hysterical invective.
+Little points of foam formed at the corners of her mouth. Her bonnet
+had slipped off backwards, and hung by its strings round her neck. Her
+right-hand glove of biscuit brown had split across the palm.
+
+Mrs. Bindle had lost all control of herself.
+
+"He's here! He's here! I saw him come! You Jezebel! You're hiding him;
+but I'll find him. I'll find him. You--you----"
+
+With a wild, hysterical scream, she darted to the door, tore it open,
+dashed along the passage, and burst into the kitchen.
+
+"So I've caught you with the Jez----" She stopped as if petrified.
+
+Mr. Brunger had just played his last domino, and was sitting back in his
+chair in triumph. Elsie, one arm round her father's neck, was laughing
+derisively at Bindle, who sat gazing with comical concern at five
+dominoes standing on their sides facing him.
+
+All three heads jerked round, and three pairs of widened eyes gazed at
+the dishevelled, white-faced figure, standing looking down at them with
+the light of madness in its eyes.
+
+"Oo-er!" gasped Elsie, as her arms tightened round her father's neck,
+almost strangling him.
+
+"Grrrrmp," choked Mr. Brunger, dropping his pipe on to his knees.
+
+Bindle started up, overturning his chair in the movement. His eyes were
+blazing, his lips were set in a firm line, and his hands were clenched
+convulsively at his sides.
+
+"You--you get out of 'ere!" the words seemed to burst from him
+involuntarily, "or----"
+
+For one bewildered moment, Mrs. Bindle stared at him, in her eyes a look
+in which surprise and fear seemed to strive for mastery. Her gaze
+wandered on to the frightened girl clutching her father round the neck,
+and then back to Bindle. She turned as suddenly as she had entered,
+cannoned off Mrs. Brunger, who stood behind her, and stumbled blindly
+along the passage out into the street.
+
+Mrs. Brunger followed, and closed the front-door behind her. When she
+returned to the kitchen, Bindle had picked up his chair and resumed his
+seat. His hands were trembling slightly, and he was very white.
+
+"She--she ain't been well lately," he muttered huskily. "I----"
+
+"Now, mother, where's the beer? I'm feeling a bit thirsty;" and after
+this unusually lengthy speech, Mr. Brunger proceeded to shuffle the
+dominoes with an almost alarming vigour, whilst Elsie, wonder-eyed and a
+little pale, sat on the arm of her father's chair glancing covertly at
+Bindle.
+
+That night, when he returned home, Bindle found laid out on the kitchen
+table, a bottle of beer, a glass, two pieces of bread and butter, a
+piece of cheese and a small dish of pickled onions.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered, at the sight of this unusual attention.
+"Wonders'll never cease," and he proceeded to unscrew the stopper of the
+beer-bottle.
+
+The incident of the Brungers was never subsequently referred to between
+them; but Mrs. Bindle gave herself no rest until she had unmasked the
+cause of all the trouble.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley was persuaded to see the reason why she should withdraw
+from the Alton Road Chapel Temperance Society, the reason being a
+half-quartern bottle of gin, from which she was caught imbibing at a
+magic-lantern entertainment,--and it was Mrs. Bindle who caught her.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Punctuation has been normalized. On page 245, the
+word "mumured" in the original text has been changed to "murmured".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Hebert Jenkins
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Herbert Jenkins.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Hebert Jenkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Bindle
+       Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles
+
+Author: Hebert Jenkins
+
+Release Date: September 6, 2011 [EBook #37324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BINDLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Cathy Maxam and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div>
+<div class="figcenter"/>
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover"/>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>M<span class="ssup">RS</span> BINDLE</h1>
+
+<p class="center">SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE<br />
+DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BINDLES</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Ever since the success achieved by <i>Bindle</i>,
+Herbert Jenkins has been urged to write
+giving Mrs. Bindle's point of view. This
+book is the result.</p>
+
+<p>Among other things, it narrates how
+Mrs. Bindle caught a chill, how a nephew
+was born to her and what effect it had
+upon her outlook.</p>
+
+<p>It tells how she encountered a bull, and
+what happened to the man who endeavoured
+to take forcible possession of her home.</p>
+
+<p>She is shown as breaking a strike by
+precipitating a lock-out, burning incense to
+her brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, and refusing
+the armistice that was offered.</p>
+
+<p>One chapter tells of her relations with
+her neighbours. Another deals with a
+musical evening she planned, and yet a
+third of how she caught a chill and was in
+great fear of heaven.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center u"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p>
+
+<table
+  border="0"
+  cellpadding="2"
+  width="60%"
+  summary="">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">BINDLE</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE NIGHT CLUB</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">ADVENTURES OF BINDLE</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">JOHN DENE OF TORONTO</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">MALCOLM SAGE, DETECTIVE</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE RAIN-GIRL</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE RETURN OF ALFRED</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE BINDLES ON THE ROCKS</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE STIFFSONS and other stories</td>
+<td class="tdr">2s. 6d. net.</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h1>M<span class="ssup">RS</span><br />
+BINDLE</h1>
+
+<p class="title">
+SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE<br />
+DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BINDLES</p>
+
+
+<p class="title">
+BY<br />
+HERBERT<br />
+JENKINS<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="title">
+<span>HERBERT</span>&nbsp;<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">JENKINS</span>&nbsp;<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">LIMITED</span><br />
+YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S S.W.1.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<div>
+<div class="figcenter"/>
+<img src="images/img004.jpg" alt="img004"/>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="title"><i>Ninth printing, completing 104,643 copies</i></p>
+
+<p class="title">
+<small>MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY</small><br />
+<small>PURNELL AND SONS, PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON</small>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="title">
+<small>TO</small><br />
+ARTHUR<br />
+COMPTON<br />
+RICKETT<br />
+<small>M.A., LL.D.</small>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center">
+<big>CONTENTS</big>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<table
+  border="0"
+  cellpadding="4"
+  cellspacing="10"
+  width="60%"
+  summary="0">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><small>CHAPTER</small></td>
+<td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#MRS_BINDLE">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">38</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE ENTERTAINS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">60</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl">THE COMING OF JOSEPH THE SECOND</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">89</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">108</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">125</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">150</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl">THE SUMMER-CAMP FOR TIRED WORKERS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">168</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MR. HEARTY ENCOUNTERS A BULL</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">188</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">X.</td>
+<td class="tdl">THE COMING OF THE WHIRLWIND</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">209</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XI.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE TAKES A CHILL</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">237</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XII.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">263</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl">MRS. BINDLE'S DISCOVERY</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">283</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><a name="MRS_BINDLE" id="MRS_BINDLE"></a>M<span class="ssup">RS</span> BINDLE</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"Well! What's the matter now? Lorst
+your job?"</p>
+
+<p>With one hand resting upon the edge
+of the pail beside which she was kneeling, Mrs. Bindle
+looked up, challenge in her eyes. Bindle's unexpected
+appearance while she was washing the kitchen oilcloth
+filled her with foreboding.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a strike on at the yard," he replied in a
+tone which, in spite of his endeavour to render it casual,
+sounded like a confession of guilt. He knew Mrs.
+Bindle; he knew also her views on strikes.</p>
+
+<p>"A what?" she cried, rising to her feet and wiping
+her hands upon the coarse canvas apron that covered
+the skirt carefully festooned about her hips. "A
+what?"</p>
+
+<p>"A strike," repeated Bindle. "They give Walter
+'Odson the sack, so we all come out."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you have, have you?" she cried, her thin lips
+disappearing ominously. "And when are you going
+back, I'd like to know?" She regarded him with an
+eye that he knew meant war.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say," he replied, as he proceeded to fill his
+pipe from a tin tobacco-box. "Depends on the
+Union," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"The Union!" she cried with rising wrath. "I
+wish I had them here. I'd give them Union, throwing
+men out of work, with food the price it is. What's
+going to 'appen to us? Can you tell me that?" she
+demanded, her diction becoming a little frayed at the
+edges, owing to the intensity of her feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle remained silent. He realised that he was
+faced by a crisis.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice thing you coming 'ome at eleven o'clock in
+the morning calmly saying you've struck," she continued
+angrily. "You're a lazy, good-for-nothing set
+of loafers, the whole lot of you, that's what you are.
+When you're tired of work and want a 'oliday you
+strike, and spend your time in public-'ouses, betting
+and drinking and swearing, and us women slaving
+morning, noon and night to keep you. Suppose I was
+to strike, what then?"</p>
+
+<p>She undid her canvas apron, and with short, jerky
+movements proceeded to fold and place it in the
+dresser-drawer. She then let down the festoons into
+which her skirt had been gathered about her inconspicuous
+hips.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was a sharp, hatchet-faced woman, with
+eyes too closely set together to satisfy an artist.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The narrowness of her head was emphasised by
+the way in which her thin, sandy hair was drawn
+behind each ear and screwed tightly into a knot at
+the back.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips were thin and slightly marked, and when she
+was annoyed they had a tendency to disappear altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"How are we going to live?" she demanded.
+"Answer me that! You and your strikes!"</p>
+
+<p>Bindle struck a match and became absorbed in
+lighting his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do for food?" She was
+not to be denied.</p>
+
+<p>"We're a-goin' to get strike pay," he countered,
+seizing the opening.</p>
+
+<p>"Strike pay!" she cried scornfully. "A fat lot of
+good that'll do. A pound a week, I suppose, and you
+eating like a&mdash;like a&mdash;&mdash;" she paused for a satisfactory
+simile. "Eating me out of 'ouse and 'ome," she
+amended. "'Strike pay!' I'd give 'em strike pay if
+I had my way."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll 'elp," suggested Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Help! Yes, it'll help you to find out how hungry
+you can get," she retorted grimly. "I'd like to have
+that man Smillie here, I'd give him a bit of my
+mind."</p>
+
+<p>"But 'e ain't done it," protested Bindle, a sense
+of fair play prompting him to defend the absent
+leader. "'E's a miner. We don't belong to 'is
+Union."</p>
+
+<p>"They're all tarred with the same brush," cried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+Mrs. Bindle, "a good-for-nothing, lazy lot. They
+turn you round their little fingers, and then laugh
+at you up their sleeves. I know them," she added
+darkly.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle edged towards the door. He had not been in
+favour of the strike; now it was even less popular with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you're going round to your low public-house,
+to drink and smoke and tell each other how
+clever you've been," she continued. "Then you'll
+come back expecting to find your dinner ready to put in
+your mouth."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's words were prophetic. Bindle <i>was</i>
+going round to The Yellow Ostrich to meet his mates,
+and discuss the latest strike-news.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't 'ave me a blackleg, Lizzie, would
+you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk to me about such things," she retorted.
+"I'm a hardworking woman, I am, inchin' and pinchin'
+to keep the home respectable, while you and your low
+companions refuse to work. I wish I had them all
+here, I'd give them strikes." Her voice shook with
+suppressed passion.</p>
+
+<p>Realising that the fates were against him, Bindle
+beat a gloomy retreat, and turned his steps in the
+direction of The Yellow Ostrich.</p>
+
+<p>At one o'clock he returned to Fenton Street, a little
+doubtful; but very hungry.</p>
+
+<p>He closed the gate quietly, Mrs. Bindle hated the
+banging of gates. Suddenly he caught sight of a piece
+of white paper pinned to the front door. A moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+later he was reading the dumbfounding announcement:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I have struck too.</p>
+
+<p>
+"<span class="smcap">E. Bindle.</span>"<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The words, which were written on the back of a coal-merchant's
+advertisement, seemed to dance before his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious that at the front window on either
+side a face was watching him intently. In Fenton
+Street drama was the common property of all.</p>
+
+<p>With a puzzled expression in his eyes, Bindle stood
+staring at the piece of paper and its ominous message,
+his right hand scratching his head through the blue and
+white cricket cap he habitually wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed," he muttered, as Mrs. Grimps,
+who lived at No. 5, came to her door and stood regarding
+him not unsympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of her neighbour, Mrs. Sawney, who
+occupied No. 9, also appeared, her hands rolled up in
+her apron and her arms steaming. She had been
+engaged in the scullery when "'Arriet," who had been
+set to watch events, rushed in from the front room with
+the news that Mr. Bindle was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"Serves you right, it does," said Mrs. Sawney.
+"You men," she added, as if to remove from her words
+any suggestion that they were intended as personal.
+Bindle was very popular with his neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>"Strikes you does, when you ain't feeling like work,"
+chorused Mrs. Grimps, "I know you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Bindle looked from one to the other. For once he
+felt there was nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's the kids," said a slatternly-looking
+woman with a hard mouth and dusty hair, who had
+just drifted up from two doors away. "A lot you
+cares. It's us wot 'as to suffer."</p>
+
+<p>There was a murmur from the other women, who had
+been reinforced by two neighbours from the opposite
+side of the street.</p>
+
+<p>"She 'as my sympathy," said Mrs. Sawney,
+"although I can't say I likes 'er as a friend."</p>
+
+<p>During these remarks, Bindle had been searching
+for his latch-key, which he now drew forth and inserted
+in the lock; but, although the latch responded, the door
+did not give. It was bolted on the inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered again, too surprised
+at this new phase of the situation to be more
+than dimly conscious of the remarks of those about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"My sister's man struck three months ago," said one
+of the new arrivals, "and 'er expectin' 'er fifth. Crool
+I calls it. They ought to 'ave 'em theirselves is wot I
+say. That'ud learn 'em to strike."</p>
+
+<p>A murmur of approval broke from the others at this
+enigmatical utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very well for them," cried Mrs. Sawney;
+"but it's us wot 'as to suffer, us and the pore kids,
+bless 'em. 'Arriet, you let me catch you swingin'
+on that gate again, my beauty, and I'll skin
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The last remark was directed at the little girl, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+had seized the moment of her mother's pre-occupation
+to indulge herself in an illicit joy.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word, Bindle turned and walked down
+the flagged path to the gate, and along Fenton Street
+in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich, leaving behind
+him a group of interested women, who would find in
+his tragedy material for a week's gossip.</p>
+
+<p>His customary cheeriness had forsaken him. He
+realised that he was faced by a domestic crisis that
+frankly puzzled him&mdash;and he was hungry.</p>
+
+<p>As he pushed open the hospitable swing-door of The
+Yellow Ostrich, he was greeted by a new and even more
+bewildering phase of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, Bindle," cried an angry voice, "wot the
+blinkin' 'ell's your missis up to?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may search me," was Bindle's lugubrious
+reply, as he moved across to the bar and ordered a pint
+of beer, some bread, and "a bit o' the cheese wot
+works the lift."</p>
+
+<p>"You was agin us chaps striking," continued the
+speaker who had greeted Bindle on his entrance, a
+man with a criminal forehead, a loose mouth, and a
+dirty neck-cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's your complaint, mate?" enquired Bindle
+indifferently, as he lifted his pewter from the counter,
+and took a pull that half emptied it of its contents.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's your ruddy missis been up to?" demanded
+the man aggressively.</p>
+
+<p>"Look 'ere, 'Enery, ole sport," said Bindle quietly,
+as he wiped his lips with the back of his hand, "you
+ain't pretty, an' you ain't good; but try an' keep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+yer mouth clean when you speaks of Mrs. B. See?"</p>
+
+<p>A murmur of approval rose from the other men,
+with whom Bindle was popular and Henry Gilkes was
+not.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's she mean a-goin' round to my missis an'
+gettin' 'er to bolt me out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bolt you out!" cried Bindle, with a puzzled
+expression. "Wotjer talkin' about?"</p>
+
+<p>"When I goes 'ome to dinner," was the angry retort,
+"there's a ticket on the blinkin' door sayin' my missis
+'as struck. I'll strike 'er!" he added malevolently.
+"The lady next door tells me that it's your missis wot
+done it."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Bindle gazed at his fellow-sufferer,
+then he smacked his thigh with the air of a man who
+has just seen a great joke, which for some time has
+evaded him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Enery," he grinned, "she's done it to me too."</p>
+
+<p>"Done wot?" enquired Henry, who, as a Father of
+the Chapel, felt he was a man of some importance.</p>
+
+<p>"Locked me out, back <i>and</i> front," explained Bindle,
+enjoying his mate's bewilderment. "Wot about the
+solidarity of labour now, ole sport?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Gilkes had one topic of conversation&mdash;"the
+solidarity of labour." Those who worked with him
+found it wearisome listening to his views on the bloated
+capitalist, and how he was to be overcome. They
+preferred discussing their own betting ventures, and the
+prospects of the Chelsea and Fulham football teams.</p>
+
+<p>"Done it to you!" repeated Gilkes dully. "Wot
+she done?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I jest nipped round to get a bit o' dinner," explained
+Bindle, "and there was both doors bolted, an' a note
+a-sayin' that Mrs. B. 'ad struck. Personally, myself,
+I calls it a lock-out," he added with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>Several of his hearers began to manifest signs of
+uneasiness. They had not been home since early
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll break 'er stutterin' jaw if my missis locks
+me out," growled a heavily-bearded man, known as
+"Ruddy Bill" on account of the intensity of his
+language.</p>
+
+<p>"Jest the sort o' thing you would do," said Bindle
+genially. "You got a sweet nature, Bill, in spite of
+them whiskers."</p>
+
+<p>Ruddy Bill growled something in his beard, while
+several of the other men drained their pewters and
+slipped out, intent on discovering whether or no their
+own domestic bliss were threatened by this new and
+unexpected danger.</p>
+
+<p>From then on, the public bar of The Yellow Ostrich
+hummed with angry talk and threats of what would
+happen if the lords, who there gloried and drank deep,
+should return to their hearths and find manifestations
+of rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the men, who had gone to investigate the
+state of their own domestic barometers, were back in
+half an hour with the news that they too had been
+locked out from home and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>About three o'clock, Ruddy Bill returned, streams
+of profanity flowing from his lips. Finding himself
+bolted out, he had broken open the door; but no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+one was there. Now he was faced with a threat of
+ejectment from the landlord, who had heard of the
+wilful damage to his property, plus the cost of a new
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Several times that afternoon the landlord of The
+Yellow Ostrich, himself regarded as an epicure in
+the matter of "language," found it necessary to
+utter the stereotyped phrase, "Now gents, if <i>you</i>
+please," which, with him, meant that the talk was
+becoming unfit for the fo'c'sle of a tramp steamer.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>Left to herself by the departure of Bindle for The
+Yellow Ostrich, Mrs. Bindle had, for some time, stood
+by the dresser deep in thought. She had then wrung-out
+the house-flannel, emptied the pail, placed them
+under the sink and once more returned to the dresser.
+Five minutes' meditation was followed by swift
+action.</p>
+
+<p>First she took her bonnet from the dresser-drawer,
+then unhooking a dark brown mackintosh from behind
+the door, she proceeded to make her outdoor
+toilet in front of the looking-glass on the mantelpiece.</p>
+
+<p>She then sought out ink-bottle and pen, and wrote
+her defiance with an ink-eaten nib. This accomplished,
+she bolted the front-door on the inside, first attaching
+her strike-notice. Leaving the house by the door<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+giving access to the scullery, she locked it, taking the
+key with her.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was grim and her walk was determined,
+as she made her way to the yard at which Bindle was
+employed. There she demanded to see the manager
+and, after some difficulty, was admitted.</p>
+
+<p>She began by reproaching him and ordering him
+to stop the strike. When, however, he had explained
+that the strike was entirely due to the action of the
+men, she ended by telling him of her own drastic
+action, and her determination to continue her strike
+until the men went back.</p>
+
+<p>The manager surprised her by leaning back in his
+chair and laughing uproariously.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bindle," he cried at length, as he wiped the
+tears from his eyes, "you're a genius; but I'm sorry
+for Bindle. Now, do you want to end the strike in a
+few hours?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle looked at him suspiciously; but,
+conscious of the very obvious admiration with which
+he regarded her act, she relented sufficiently to listen
+to what he had to say.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later she left the office with a list of
+the names and addresses of the strikers, including that
+of the branch organising secretary of the Union.
+She had decided upon a counter-offensive.</p>
+
+<p>Her first call was upon Mrs. Gilkes, a quiet little
+woman who had been subdued to meekness by the
+"solidarity of labour." Here she had to admit
+failure.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you mean, my dear," said Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+Gilkes; "but you see, Mr. Gilkes wouldn't like it."
+There was a tremor of fear in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't like it!" echoed Mrs. Bindle. "Of
+course he wouldn't like it. Bindle won't like it when he
+knows," her jaws met grimly and her lips disappeared.
+"You're afraid," she added accusingly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, my dear, I am," was the disconcerting
+reply. "I never 'ad no 'eart for a fight, that's why
+Mr. Gilkes 'as come it over me like 'e 'as. My sister,
+Mary, was sayin' only last Toosday&mdash;no it wasn't, it
+was We'n'sday, I remember because it was the day
+we 'ad sausages wot Mr. Gilkes said wasn't fresh.
+'Amelia,' she says, 'you ain't got the 'eart of a rabbit,
+or else you wouldn't stand wot you do,'" and, looking
+up into Mrs. Bindle's face, she added, "It's true,
+Mrs. Gimble, although I didn't own it to Mary, 'er
+bein' my sister an' so uppish in 'er ways."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll be sorry," was Mrs. Bindle's comment,
+as she turned towards the door. "I'll be no
+man's slave."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I 'aven't the 'eart, Mrs. Gimber."</p>
+
+<p>"Bindle!" snapped Mrs. Bindle over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Mrs. Spindle, my mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle stalked along the passage, through the
+front door and out of the gate, leaving Mrs. Gilkes
+murmuring deprecatingly that she "'adn't no 'eart for
+a fight."</p>
+
+<p>Although she would not own it, Mrs. Bindle was
+discouraged by the failure of her first attempt at
+strike-breaking. But for her good-fortune in encountering
+Mrs. Hopton at her second venture,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+she might even have relinquished the part of
+Lysistrata and have returned home to prepare
+Bindle's dinner.</p>
+
+<p>It was with something like misgiving that she
+knocked at No. 32 Wessels Street. This feeling was
+accentuated when the door was opened with great
+suddenness by an enormously big woman with a
+square chin, fighting eyes, and very little hair.</p>
+
+<p>With arms akimbo, one elbow touching either side
+of the passage, as if imbued with the sentiments of
+Horatius Cocles, Mrs. Hopton stood with tightly-shut
+mouth regarding her caller. As soon as Mrs.
+Bindle had made her mission known, however, Mrs.
+Hopton's manner underwent an entire change. Her
+hands dropped from her hips, her fixed expression
+relaxed, and she stood invitingly aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm your woman," she cried. "You come in,
+Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bindle!" prompted Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"You come in, Mrs. Bindle, you got the woman
+you want in Martha 'Opton. Us women 'ave stood
+this sort of thing long enough. I've always said so."</p>
+
+<p>She led the way into an airless little parlour, in
+which a case of wax-fruit, a dusty stuffed dog and a
+clothes-horse hung with the familiarities of Mrs.
+Hopton's laundry, first struck the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always said," continued Mrs. Hopton, "that
+us women was too meek and mild by half in the way
+we takes things. My man's a fool," she added with
+conviction. "'E's that easily led by them arbitrators,
+that's wot I call 'em, that they makes 'im do just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+wotever they wants, dirty, lazy set o' tykes. Never
+done a day's work in their lives, they 'aven't, not one
+of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I say," cried Mrs. Bindle, for once
+in her life finding a congenial spirit outside the walls
+of the Alton Road Chapel. "I've locked up my
+house," she continued, "and put a note on the door
+that I've struck too."</p>
+
+<p>The effect of these words upon Mrs. Hopton was
+startling. Her head went back like that of a chicken
+drinking, her hands rose once more to her hips, and
+her huge frame shook and pulsated as if it contained
+a high-power motor-engine. Mrs. Bindle gazed at
+her with widened eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Her-her-her!" came in deep, liquid gutturals
+from Mrs. Hopton's lips. "Her-her-her!" Then her
+head came down again, and Mrs. Bindle saw that the
+grim lips were parted, displaying some very yellow,
+unprepossessing teeth. Mrs. Hopton was manifesting
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>Without further comment, Mrs. Hopton left the
+room. In her absence, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to
+sum-up her character from the evidence that her
+home contained. The result was unfavourable. She
+had just decided that her hostess was dirty and
+untidy, without sense of decency or religion, when Mrs.
+Hopton re-entered. In one hand she carried a piece
+of paper, in the other a small ink-bottle, out of which
+an orange-coloured pen-holder reared its fluted length.</p>
+
+<p>Clearing a space on the untidy table, she bent
+down and, with squared elbows and cramped fingers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+proceeded to scrawl the words: "I have struck too.
+M. Hopton."</p>
+
+<p>Then, straightening herself, she once more threw
+back her head, and another stream of "Her-her-her's"
+gushed towards the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'll come with you," she said at length.
+Without waiting to don cloak or bonnet, she proceeded
+to pin the notice on the front door, which she bolted
+on the inside. She then left by the scullery door,
+locking it, just as Mrs. Bindle had done, and carrying
+with her the key.</p>
+
+<p>Although Mrs. Bindle felt that she suffered socially
+from being seen with the lumbering, untidy Mrs.
+Hopton, she regarded it as a sacrifice to a just cause.
+It was not long, however, before she discovered that
+she had recruited, not a lieutenant, but a leader.</p>
+
+<p>Seizing the list of names and addresses from her
+companion's hand, Mrs. Hopton glanced at it and turned
+in the direction of the street in which lived the timid
+Mrs. Gilkes. As they walked, Mrs. Bindle told the
+story of Mrs. Gilkes's cowardice, drawing from the
+Amazon-like Mrs. Hopton the significant words "Leave
+'er to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, none of this," was her greeting to Mrs.
+Gilkes as she opened her front door. "Out you comes
+and joins the strike-breakers. None o' your nonsense
+or&mdash;&mdash;" she paused significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gilkes protested her cowardice, she grovelled,
+she dragged in her sister, Mary, and the wrathful
+Gilkes; but without avail. Almost before she knew
+what had happened, she was walking between Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+Hopton and Mrs. Bindle, the back-door key clasped in
+one hand, striving to tie the strings of her bonnet
+beneath a chin that was obviously too shallow for the
+purpose. In her heart was a great terror; yet she
+was conscious of a strange and not unpleasant thrill
+at the thought of her own daring. She comforted
+herself with Mrs. Hopton's promise of protection
+against her lord's anger.</p>
+
+<p>The overpowering personality of Mrs. Hopton was
+too much for the other wives. The one or two who
+made a valiant endeavour to stand out were overwhelmed
+by her ponderous ridicule, which bordered
+upon intimidation.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, get a pen an' ink," she would cry and, before
+the reluctant housewife knew what had happened,
+she had announced that she too had struck, and Mrs.
+Hopton's army had been swelled by another recruit.</p>
+
+<p>At one house they found the husband about to sit
+down to an early dinner. That gave Mrs. Hopton
+her chance.</p>
+
+<p>"You lazy, guzzling, good-for-nothing son of a
+God-damn loafer!" she shouted, her deep voice throbbing
+with passion. "Call yourself a man? Fine
+sort of man you are, letting your wife work and slave
+while you strike and fill your belly with beef and beer.
+I've seen better things than you thrown down the sink,
+that I 'ave."</p>
+
+<p>At the first attack, the man had risen from the
+table in bewilderment. As Mrs. Hopton emptied upon
+him the vials of her anger, he had slowly retreated
+towards the scullery door. She made a sudden move<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>ment
+in his direction; he turned&mdash;wrenched open the
+door, and fled.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bolton," said the neat little woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bolton," said Mrs. Hopton; "but
+we're going to break this 'ere strike, me and Mrs.
+Bindle and all these other ladies." She waved her hand
+to indicate the army she had already collected.</p>
+
+<p>Then she went on to explain; but Mrs. Bolton was
+adamant against all her invitations to join the emancipationists.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we got to fight your battle," Mrs.
+Hopton cried, and proceeded to drench her victim
+with ridicule; but Mrs. Bolton stood fast, and the
+strike-breakers had to acknowledge defeat.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Bindle's idea that they should hold a
+meeting outside the organising secretary's house. The
+suggestion was acclaimed with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get a tidy few, first," counselled Mrs. Hopton.
+"It'll make 'im think 'arder."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of an hour, even Mrs. Hopton was satisfied
+with the number of her supporters, and she gave
+the word for the opening of hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, just as he was rising from an excellent
+meal, Mr. James Cunham was surprised to find
+that his neatly-kept front-garden was filled with
+women, while more women seemed to occupy the
+street. Neighbours came out, errand-boys called to
+friends, that they might not miss the episode, children
+paused on their way to school; all seemed to realise
+the dramatic possibilities of the situation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hopton played a fugue upon Mr. Cunham's
+knocker, bringing him to the door in person.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, monkey-face," she boomed. There was a
+scream of laughter from her followers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cunham started back as if he had been struck.</p>
+
+<p>"Want to starve us, do you?" continued Mrs.
+Hopton.</p>
+
+<p>"What's all this about?" he enquired, recovering
+himself. He was a man accustomed to handling
+crowds, even unfriendly crowds; but never had he
+encountered anything like the cataract of wrathful
+contumely that now poured from Mrs. Hopton's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Just 'ad a good dinner, I suppose," she cried
+scornfully. "Been enjoyin' it, eh? Cut from the
+joint and two vegs, puddin' to follow, with a glass
+of stout to wash it down. That the meenyou, eh?
+What does it cost you when our men strike? Do
+you 'ave to keep 'alf a dozen bellies full on a pound a
+week?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a murmur from the women behind her,
+a murmur that Mr. Cunham did not like.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice little 'ouse you got 'ere," continued Mrs.
+Hopton critically, as she peered into the neat and well-furnished
+hall. "All got out o' strikes," she added
+over her shoulder to her companions. "All got on
+the do-nothin'-at-all-easy-purchase-system."</p>
+
+<p>This time there was no mistaking the menace in the
+murmur from the women behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a beauty, you are," continued Mrs. Hopton.
+"Not much sweat about your lily brow, Mr.
+Funny Cunham."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cunham felt that the time had come for
+action.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.
+"Why have you come here, and who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who are we?" cried Mrs. Hopton scornfully.
+"He asks who we are," she threw over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was an angry murmur from the rank
+and file.</p>
+
+<p>"We're the silly fools wot married the men you
+brought out on strike," said Mrs. Hopton, looking the
+organising secretary up and down as if he were on
+show. "Creases in 'is trousers, too," she cried.
+"You ain't 'alf a swell. Well, we just come to tell
+you that the strike's orf, because we've struck. Get
+me, Steve?"</p>
+
+<p>"We've declared a lock-out," broke in Mrs. Bindle
+with inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Back went Mrs. Hopton's head, up went her hands
+to her hips, and deep-throated "Her-her-her's" poured
+from her parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>"A lock-out!" she cried. "Her-her-her, a lock-out!
+That's the stuff to give 'em!" and the rank and
+file took up the cry and, out of the plenitude of his
+experience, Mr. Cunham recognised that the crowd
+was hopelessly out of hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we down-hearted?" cried a voice, and the
+shrieks of "No!" that followed confirmed Mr. Cunham
+in his opinion that the situation was not without
+its serious aspect.</p>
+
+<p>He was not a coward and he stood his ground, listening
+to Mrs. Hopton's inspiring oratory of denunciation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+It was three o'clock before he saw his garden again&mdash;a
+trampled waste; an offering to the Moloch of strikes.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn the woman!" he cried, as, shutting the
+door, he returned to the room he used as an office, there
+to deliberate upon this new phase of the situation.
+"Curse her!"</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">III</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly half-past ten that night when Bindle
+tip-toed up the tiled-path leading to the front door of
+No. 7 Fenton Street.</p>
+
+<p>Softly he inserted his key in the lock and turned it;
+but the door refused to give. He stepped back to
+gaze up at the bedroom window; there was no sign
+of a light.</p>
+
+<p>It suddenly struck him that the piece of paper on the
+door was not the same in shape as that he had seen
+at dinner-time. It was too dark to see if there was
+anything written on it. Taking a box of matches
+from his pocket, he struck a light, shielding it carefully
+so that it should shine only on the paper.</p>
+
+<p>His astonishment at what he read caused him to
+forget the lighted match, which burnt his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "If this ain't
+it," and once more he read the sinister notice:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"You have struck. We women have declared a
+lock-out.</p>
+
+<p>
+"<span class="smcap">E. Bindle.</span>"<br />
+</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes' cogitation, he tip-toed down the
+path and round to the back of the house; but the
+scullery door was inflexible in its inhospitality.</p>
+
+<p>He next examined the windows. Each was securely
+fastened.</p>
+
+<p>"Where'm I goin' to sleep?" he muttered, as
+once more he tip-toed up the path.</p>
+
+<p>After a further long deliberation, he lifted the
+knocker, gave three gentle taps&mdash;and waited. As
+nothing happened, he tried four taps of greater strength.
+These, in turn, produced no response. Then he gave
+a knock suggestive of a telegraph boy, or a registered
+letter. At each fresh effort he stepped back to get a
+view of the bedroom window.</p>
+
+<p>He fancied that the postman-cum-telegraph-boy's
+knock had produced a slight fluttering of the curtain.
+He followed it up with something that might have been
+the police, or a fire.</p>
+
+<p>As he stepped back, the bedroom-window was thrown
+up, and Mrs. Bindle's head appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't get in," said Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you can't," was the uncompromising
+response, "and I don't mean you shall."</p>
+
+<p>"But where'm I goin' to sleep?" he demanded,
+anxiety in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That's for you to settle."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, Lizzie, come down an' let me in," he cried,
+falling to cajolery.</p>
+
+<p>For answer Mrs. Bindle banged-to the window. He
+waited expectantly for the door to be opened.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the end of five minutes he realised that Mrs.
+Bindle had probably gone back to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't stay 'ere all the bloomin' night, me
+with various veins in my legs," he muttered, conscious
+that from several windows interested heads were
+thrust.</p>
+
+<p>Fully convinced that Mrs. Bindle was not on her
+way down to admit him, he once more fell back upon
+the knocker, awakening the echoes of Fenton Street.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of the window-sash being raised, he
+stepped back and looked up eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, wot the &mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Something seemed to flash through the night, and
+he received the contents of the ewer full in the
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"That'll teach you to come waking me up at this
+time of night," came the voice of Mrs. Bindle, who, a
+moment later, retreated into the room. Bindle, rightly
+conjecturing that she had gone for more water, retired
+out of reach.</p>
+
+<p>"You soaked me through to the skin," he cried,
+when she re-appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"And serve you right, too, you and your strikes."</p>
+
+<p>"But ain't you goin' to let me in?"</p>
+
+<p>"When the strike's off the lock-out'll cease," was
+the oracular retort.</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't want to strike," protested Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you should have been a man and said so,
+instead of letting that little rat make you do everything
+he wants, him sitting down to a good dinner every day,
+all paid for out of strikes."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were sympathetic murmurs from the surrounding
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" began Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me 'ear anything more of you to-night,
+Joe Bindle," came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising
+voice, "or next time I'll throw the jug an' all at you,"
+and with that she banged-to the window in a way
+that convinced Bindle it was useless to parley further.</p>
+
+<p>"Catch my death o' cold," he grumbled, as he
+turned on a reluctant heel in the direction of Fulham
+High Street, with the intention of claiming hospitality
+from his sister-in-law, Mrs. Hearty. "Wot am I goin'
+to do for duds," he added. "Funny ole bird I should
+look in one of 'Earty's frock-coats."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">IV</p>
+
+<p>The next morning at nine o'clock, the wives of the
+strikers met by arrangement outside the organising
+secretary's house; but the strikers themselves were
+before them, and Mr. Cunham found himself faced
+with the ugliest situation he had ever encountered.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the groups of strikers, the women
+raised shrill cries. The men, too, lifted their voices,
+not in derision or criticism of their helpmates; but
+at the organising secretary.</p>
+
+<p>The previous night the same drama that had been
+enacted between Bindle and Mrs. Bindle had taken
+place outside the houses of many of the other strikers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+with the result that they had become "fed up to the
+blinkin' neck with the whole ruddy business."</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" cried Mrs. Hopton as, at the head of her
+legion of Amazons, she reached the first group of men.
+"How jer like it?"</p>
+
+<p>The men turned aside, grumbling in their throats.</p>
+
+<p>"Her-her-her!" she laughed. "Boot's on the
+other foot now, my pretty canaries, ain't it? Nobody
+mustn't do anythink to upset you; but you can do
+what you streamin' well like, you lot o' silly mugs!</p>
+
+<p>"Wotjer let that little rat-faced sniveller turn you
+round 'is little finger for? You ain't men, you're just
+Unionists wot 'ave got to do wot 'e tells you. I see
+'im yesterday," she continued after a slight pause,
+"'aving a rare ole guzzle wot you pays for by striking.
+'Ow much does it cost 'im? That's wot I want to
+know, the rat-faced little stinker!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment "the rat-faced little stinker" himself
+appeared, hat on head and light overcoat thrown
+over his arm. He smiled wearily, he was not favourably
+impressed by the look of things.</p>
+
+<p>His appearance was the signal for shrill shouts from
+the women, and a grumbling murmur from the men.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere's Kayser Cunham," shouted one woman, and
+then individual cries were drowned in the angry murmur
+of protest and recrimination.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cunham found himself faced by the same men
+who, the day before, had greeted his words with cheers.
+Now they made it manifest that if he did not find
+a way out of the strike difficulty, there would be
+trouble.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Take that!" roared Mrs. Hopton hoarsely, as she
+snatched something from a paper-bag she was carrying,
+and hurled it with all her might at the leader. Her
+aim was bad, and a small man, standing at right angles
+to the Union secretary, received a large and painfully
+ripe tomato full on the chin.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hopton's cry was a signal to the other women.
+From beneath cloaks and capes they produced every
+conceivable missile, including a number of eggs far
+gone towards chickenhood. With more zeal than
+accuracy of aim, they hurled them at the unfortunate
+Mr. Cunham. For a full minute he stood his ground
+valiantly, then, an egg catching him between the eyes
+brought swift oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>The strikers, however, did not manifest the courage
+of their leader. Although intended for the organising
+secretary, most of the missiles found a way into their
+ranks. They wavered and, a moment after, turned
+and fled.</p>
+
+<p>Approaching nearer, the women concentrated upon
+him whom they regarded as responsible for the strike,
+and their aim improved. Some of their shots took
+effect on his person, but most of them on the front of
+the house. Three windows were broken, and it was
+not until Mrs. Cunham came and dragged her egg-bespattered
+lord into the passage, banging-to the
+street door behind her, that the storm began to die
+down.</p>
+
+<p>By this time a considerable crowd of interested
+spectators had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>"Just shows you what us women can do if we've a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+mind to do it," was the oracular utterance of one woman,
+who prided herself upon having been the first arrival
+outside the actual combatants.</p>
+
+<p>"She ain't 'alf a caution," remarked a "lady friend,"
+who had joined her soon after the outbreak of hostilities.
+"That big un," she added, nodding in the direction
+of Mrs. Hopton, who, arms on hips and head thrown
+back, was giving vent to her mirth in a series of "her-her-her's."</p>
+
+<p>A policeman pushed his way through the crowd
+towards the gate. Mrs. Hopton, catching sight of
+him, turned.</p>
+
+<p>"You take my advice, my lad, and keep out of
+this."</p>
+
+<p>The policeman looked about him a little uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a strike and a lock-out," she explained, "an'
+they got a bit mixed. We ain't got no quarrel with a
+good-looking young chap like you, an' we're on private
+premises, so you just jazz along as if you 'adn't seen
+us."</p>
+
+<p>A smile fluttered about the lips of the policeman.
+The thought of passing Mrs. Hopton without seeing her
+amused him; still he took no active part in the proceedings,
+beyond an official exhortation to the crowd
+to "pass along, please."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ladies," said Mrs. Hopton, addressing her
+victorious legions; "it's all over now, bar shoutin'.
+If any o' your men start a-knockin' you about, tell
+'em we're a-goin' to stand together, and just let me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+know. We'll come round and make 'em wish they'd
+been born somethink wot can't feel."</p>
+
+<p>That morning the manager at the yard received a
+deputation from the men, headed by Mr. Cunham, who,
+although he had changed his clothes and taken a hot
+bath, was still conscious of the disgusting reek of
+rotten eggs. Before dinner-time the whole matter
+had been settled, and the men were to resume work at
+two o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle reached home a few minutes to one, hungry
+and expectant. The notice had been removed from
+the front door, and he found Mrs. Bindle in the kitchen
+ironing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she demanded as he entered, "what do
+you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Strike's orf, Lizzie," he said genially, an anxious
+eye turned to the stove upon which, however, there
+were no saucepans. This decided him that his dinner
+was in the oven.</p>
+
+<p>"I could have told you that!" was her sole comment,
+and she proceeded with her ironing.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes Bindle looked about him, then once
+more fixed his gaze upon the oven.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot time you goin' to 'ave dinner, Lizzie?" he
+asked, with all the geniality of a prodigal doubtful of
+his welcome.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had it." Mrs. Bindle's lips met in a hard,
+firm line.</p>
+
+<p>"Is mine in the oven?"</p>
+
+<p>"Better look and see."</p>
+
+<p>He walked across to the stove and opened the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+oven door. It was as bare as the cupboard of Mrs.
+Hubbard.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot you done with it, Lizzie?" he enquired, misgiving
+clutching at his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done with what?" she snapped, as
+she brought her iron down with a bang that caused
+him to jump.</p>
+
+<p>"My little bit o' groundsel."</p>
+
+<p>"When you talk sense, perhaps I can understand
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"My dinner," he explained with an injured air.</p>
+
+<p>"When you've done a day's work you'll get a day's
+dinner, and not before."</p>
+
+<p>"But the strike's orf."</p>
+
+<p>"So's the lock-out."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't stand there 'butting' me. Go and do
+some work, then you'll have something to eat," and
+Mrs. Bindle reversed the pillow-case she was ironing,
+and got in a straight right full in the centre of it,
+whilst Bindle turned gloomily to the door and made
+his way to The Yellow Ostrich, where, over a pint
+of beer and some bread and cheese, he gloomed his
+discontent.</p>
+
+<p>"No more strikes for me," said a man seated
+opposite, who was similarly engaged.</p>
+
+<p>"Same 'ere," said Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Bob Cunham got a flea in 'is ear this mornin'
+wot 'e's been askin' for," said the man, and Bindle,
+nodding in agreement, buried his face in his pewter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Mrs. Hopton was explaining to a few
+personal friends how it all had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"She done good work in startin' of us orf," was
+her tribute to Mrs. Bindle; "but I can't say I takes
+to her as a friend."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>Shoooooooossssh!</p>
+
+<p>Like a silver flash, the contents of a water-jug
+descended upon the back of the moth-eaten
+sandy cat, engaged in excavating Mrs. Bindle's
+geranium-bed.</p>
+
+<p>A curve of yellow, and Mrs. Sawney's "Sandy"
+had taken the dividing wall between No. 7 and No. 9
+in one movement&mdash;and the drama was over.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle closed her parlour-window. She
+refilled the jug, placing it ready for the next
+delinquent and then returned to her domestic
+duties.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of a thin partitioning wall, Mrs.
+Sawney left the window from which she had viewed
+her cat's attack upon Mrs. Bindle's geranium-bed,
+and Mrs. Bindle's counter-attack upon Sandy's person.
+Passing into the small passage she opened the front
+door, her lips set in a determined line.</p>
+
+<p>"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," she called, in
+accents that caused Sandy, now three gardens away,
+to pause in the act of shaking his various members<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+one by one, in an endeavour to disembarrass himself
+of the contents of Mrs. Bindle's water-jug.</p>
+
+<p>"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," cooed Mrs.
+Sawney. "Poor pussy."</p>
+
+<p>The tone of his mistress' voice rendered Sandy suspicious
+as to her intentions. He was a cat who had
+fought his way from kittenhood to a three-year-old, and
+that with the loss of nothing more conspicuous than
+the tip of his left ear. He could not remember the
+time when he had not been engaged in warfare, either
+predatory or defensive, and he had accumulated
+much wisdom in the process.</p>
+
+<p>"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. Puss, puss, puss."
+Mrs. Sawney's tone grew in mellowness as her anger
+increased. "Poor pussy."</p>
+
+<p>With a final shake of his near hind leg, Sandy put
+two more gardens between himself and that voice,
+and proceeded to damn to-morrow's weather by
+washing clean over his right ear.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney closed her front-door and retired to
+the regions that knew her best. In her heart was a
+great anger. Water had been thrown over her cat,
+an act which, according to Mrs. Sawney's code of
+ethics, constituted a personal affront.</p>
+
+<p>It was Monday, and with Mrs. Sawney the effect
+of the Monday-morning feeling, coupled with the purifying
+of the domestic linen, was a sore trial to her
+never very philosophical nature.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow'll be <i>'er</i> washing-day," she muttered,
+as she poked down the clothes in the bubbling copper
+with a long stick, bleached and furred by constant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+immersion in boiling water. "I'll show 'er, throwing
+water over my cat, the stuck-up baggage!"</p>
+
+<p>Late that afternoon, she called upon Mrs. Grimps,
+who lived at No. 5, to return the scrubbing-board she
+had borrowed that morning. With Mrs. Sawney, to
+borrow was to manifest the qualities of neighbourliness,
+and one of her grievances against Mrs. Bindle
+was that she was "too stuck up to borrow a
+pin."</p>
+
+<p>Had Sandy heard the sentiments that fell from his
+mistress's lips that afternoon, and had he not been the
+Ulysses among cats that he undoubtedly was, he
+would have become convinced that a new heaven
+or a new earth was in prospect. As it was, Sandy
+was two streets away, engaged in an affair with a
+lady of piebald appearance and coy demeanour.</p>
+
+<p>When, half an hour later, Mrs. Sawney returned to
+No. 9, her expression was even more grim. The
+sight of the pink tie-ups with which the white lace
+curtains at No. 7 were looped back, rendered her
+forgetful of her recently expressed sentiments. She
+sent Sandy at express speed from her sight, and soundly
+boxed Harriet's ears. Mrs. Sawney was annoyed.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>All her life Mrs. Bindle had been exclusive. She
+prided herself upon the fact that she was never to be
+seen gossiping upon doorstep, or at garden-gate. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+consequence, she was regarded as "a stuck-up cat";
+she called it keeping herself to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Another cause of her unpopularity with the housewives
+of Fenton Street was the way she stared at
+their windows as she passed. There was in that look
+criticism and disdain, and it inspired her neighbours
+with fury, the more so because of their impotence.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle judged a woman by her windows&mdash;and
+by the same token condemned her. Fenton Street
+knew it, and treasured up the memory.</p>
+
+<p>It was this attitude towards their windows, more
+than Mrs. Bindle's exclusiveness in the matter of
+front-door, or back-door gossip, that made for her
+unpopularity with those among whom circumstances
+and the jerry-builder had ordained that she should
+spend her days. She regarded it as a virtue not to
+be on speaking terms with anyone in the street.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part, Mrs. Bindle and her immediate
+neighbours lived in a state of armed neutrality. On
+the one side was Mrs. Sawney, a lath of a woman with
+an insatiable appetite for scandal and the mouth of
+a scold, whose windows were, in Mrs. Bindle's opinion,
+a disgrace; on the other was Mrs. Grimps, a big,
+jolly-looking woman, who laughed loudly at things,
+about which Mrs. Bindle did not even permit herself
+to think.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the armistice that prevailed, there were
+occasions when slumbering dislike would develop into
+open hostilities. The strategy employed was almost
+invariably the same, just as were the forces engaged.</p>
+
+<p>These encounters generally took place on Tuesdays,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+Mrs. Bindle's washing-day. To a woman, Fenton
+Street washed on Monday, and the fact of Mrs. Bindle
+selecting Tuesday for the cleansing her household
+linen was, in the eyes of other housewives, a direct
+challenge. It was an endeavour to vaunt her own
+superiority, and Fenton Street, despite its cockney
+good-nature, found it impossible to forgive what it
+regarded as "swank".</p>
+
+<p>The result was that occasionally Fenton Street gave
+tongue, sometimes through the medium of its offspring;
+at others from the lips of the women themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had conceived a
+clever strategy, which never failed in its effect upon
+their victim. On Mrs. Bindle's washing-days, when
+hostilities had been decided on, Mrs. Grimps would
+go up to the back-bedroom window, whilst Mrs.
+Sawney would stand at her back-door, or conversely.
+From these positions, the fences being low, they had
+an excellent view of the back garden of No. 7, and
+would carry on a conversation, the subject of which
+would be Mrs. Bindle, or the garments she was exposing
+to the public gaze.</p>
+
+<p>The two women seemed to find a never-ending source
+of interest in their neighbour's laundry. Being
+intensely refined in all such matters, Mrs. Bindle subjected
+her weekly wash to a strict censorship, drying
+the more intimate garments before the kitchen fire.
+This evoked frankly-expressed speculation between
+her two enemies as to how anyone could live without
+change of clothing.</p>
+
+<p>In her heart, Mrs. Bindle had come to dislike, almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+to dread, washing-days, although she in no way
+mitigated her uncompromising attitude towards her
+neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>When, on the Wednesday morning following one of
+these one-sided battles, Mrs. Bindle went out shopping,
+her glances at the front-windows of Mrs. Grimps's
+house, or those of Mrs. Sawney, according to the direction
+she took, were steadier and more critical than
+ever. Mrs. Bindle was not one to strike her flag to
+the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after nine on the Tuesday morning after Sandy
+had constituted himself a casus belli, Mrs. Bindle
+emerged from her scullery carrying a basketful of
+clothes, on the top of which lay a handful of clothes-pegs.
+Placing the basket on the ground, she proceeded
+to wipe with a cloth the clothes-line, which Bindle
+had put up before breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of her neat, angular form in the garden
+was the signal for Mrs. Grimps to come to her back
+door, whilst Mrs. Sawney ascended her stairs. A
+moment later, the back window of No. 9 was thrown
+up with a flourish, and the hard face of Sandy's
+mistress appeared.</p>
+
+<p>It was a curious circumstance that, although there
+was never any pre-arrangement, Mrs. Sawney always
+seemed to appear at the window just as Mrs. Grimps
+emerged from her back door, or the order would be
+reversed. Never had they been known both to appear
+together, either at window or at door. Their mutual
+understanding seemed to be that of the ancient pair
+in the old-fashioned weather-indicator.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mrs. Grimps," called Mrs. Sawney
+from her post of vantage.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mrs. Sawney," responded Mrs.
+Grimps. "Beautiful day, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine dryin' weather," responded Mrs. Sawney.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you got your washin' finished early yes'day."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, an' a rare lot there was this week," said Mrs.
+Sawney, settling her arms comfortably upon the
+window-sill. "You 'ad a tidy bit, too, I see."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied Mrs. Grimps, picking a back-tooth
+with a hair-pin. "Mr. Grimps is like Mr. Sawney,
+must 'ave 'is clean pair o' pants every week, 'e must,
+an' a shirt an' vest, too. I tell 'im he ought to 'ave
+been a millionaire."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Mrs. Sawney, "I sometimes wishes
+my 'usband would be content with calico linings to
+'is trousers, like some folks I could name. 'E's afraid
+o' them rubbin' 'im, 'e says; but then 'e always was
+clean in 'is 'abits."</p>
+
+<p>This remark was directly levelled at Mrs. Bindle's
+censorship of everything appertaining to nether-laundry.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say I sympathises with 'im," remarked
+Mrs. Grimps, returning the hair-pin to where it
+belonged. "When I sees some folks' washing, I says
+to myself, I says, 'Wot can they wear underneath?'"</p>
+
+<p>"An' well you might, Mrs. Grimps," cried Mrs.
+Sawney meaningly. "P'raps they spend the money
+on pink ribbons to tie up their lace curtains. It's
+all very well to make a show with yer windows, but,"
+with the air of one who has made an important<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+discovery, "you can't be clean unless you're clean
+all over, I says."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst these remarks were being bandied to and
+fro over her head, Mrs. Bindle had been engaged in
+pegging to the clothes-line the first batch of her week's
+wash. Her face was grimmer and harder than usual,
+and there was in her eyes a cold, grey look, suggestive
+of an iron control.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," proceeded Mrs. Grimps, "I always 'ave
+said an' always shall, that it's the underneaths wot
+count."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle stuck a peg in the corner of a tablecloth
+and, taking another from her mouth, she
+proceeded to the other end of the tablecloth and
+jabbed that, too, astride the line.</p>
+
+<p>"'Always 'ave dainty linjerry, 'Arriet,' my pore
+mother used to say," continued Mrs. Sawney, "an' I
+always 'ave. After all, who wants three pillow-cases
+a week?"</p>
+
+<p>This was in the nature of a direct challenge, as Mrs.
+Bindle had just stepped back from attaching to the
+line a third pillow-case, which immediately proceeded
+to balloon itself into joyous abandon.</p>
+
+<p>"If you <i>are</i> religious, you didn't ought to be cruel
+to dumb animals," announced Mrs. Grimps, "throwin'
+water over the pore creatures."</p>
+
+<p>"That sort never is kind to any think but theirselves,"
+commented Mrs. Sawney, with the air of
+one who is well-versed in the ways of the devout.</p>
+
+<p>Each time Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery
+that morning, her two relentless neighbours appeared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+as if by magic, and oblique pleasantries ebbed and
+flowed above her head.</p>
+
+<p>The episode of Mrs. Bindle's lock-out was discussed
+in detail. The "goody-goody" qualities affected by
+"some people" were commented on in relation to
+the more brutal instincts they occasionally manifested.</p>
+
+<p>The treatment that certain pleasant-spoken husbands,
+whom it was "a pleasure to meet," received
+from their wives, whose faces were like "vinegar on
+the point of a needle," left both Mrs. Grimps and Mrs.
+Sawney incapable of expressing the indignation that
+was within them.</p>
+
+<p>When Bindle came home to dinner, he found
+"Mrs. B. with a temper wot 'ad got a nasty edge
+on it," as he expressed it to one of his mates on
+his return to work. He was too wise, however, to
+venture an enquiry as to the cause. He realised
+that to ask for the wind might mean reaping the
+whirlwind.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the meal, Mrs. Bindle proceeded
+to clear the lines to make room for another batch.
+She hoped to get done whilst her neighbours were at
+dinner; but she had not been in the garden half-a-minute
+before her tormentors appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"I been thinkin' of keepin' a few fowls," remarked
+Mrs. Sawney, her mouth full of bread and cheese,
+"jest a 'andful of cocks an' a few 'ens," and she winked
+down at Mrs. Grimps, as Mrs. Bindle pegged a lace
+window-curtain on the line, having first subjected
+it to a vigorous rubbing with a duster.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"An' very nice too," agreed Mrs. Grimps; "I must
+say I likes an egg for my tea," she added, "only them
+cocks do fight so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shouldn't get too many," continued Mrs.
+Sawney, "say three cocks an' three 'ens. They
+ought to get on nicely together."</p>
+
+<p>These remarks had reference to a one-time project
+of Mrs. Bindle to supply her table with new-laid eggs,
+in the pursuit of which she had purchased three pairs
+of birds, equally divided as to sex.</p>
+
+<p>"That was the only time I ever enjoyed a bit o'
+cock-fightin' on my own," Bindle was wont to remark,
+when telling the story of Mrs. Bindle's application of
+the rule of monogamy to a fowl-run.</p>
+
+<p>He had made one endeavour to enlighten Mrs. Bindle
+upon the fact that the domestic cock (she insisted on
+the term "rooster") had neither rounded Cape Turk,
+nor weathered Seraglio Point; but he was told not
+to be disgusting, Mrs. Bindle's invariable rejoinder
+when sex matters cropped up. He had therefore
+desisted, enjoying to the full Mrs. Bindle's efforts to
+police her new colony.</p>
+
+<p>In those days, the Bindle's back garden had been
+a riot of flying feathers, belligerent cocks and squawking
+hens, chivvied about by Mrs. Bindle, armed with
+mop or broom.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney and a Mrs. Telcher, who had preceded
+Mrs. Grimps in the occupancy of No. 5, had sat at
+their bedroom windows, laughing until the tears ran
+down their dubious cheeks and their sides ached.
+When their mirth permitted, they had tendered advice;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+but for the most part they were so weak from laughing
+that speech was denied them.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's knowledge of the ways of fowls was
+limited; but it embraced one important piece of
+information&mdash;that without "roosters", hens would
+not lay. When Bindle had striven to set her right,
+he had been silenced with the inevitable, "Don't be
+disgusting."</p>
+
+<p>She had reasoned that if hens were stimulated to
+lay by the presence of the "male bird", then a cavalier
+each would surely result in an increased output.</p>
+
+<p>The fowls, however, had disappeared as suddenly
+as they had come, and thereafter Bindle realised that
+it was neither safe nor politic to refer to the subject.
+It had taken a plate of rice, hurled at his head from
+the other side of the kitchen, to bring him to this
+philosophical frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>For weeks afterwards, the children of Fenton Street
+would greet Mrs. Bindle's appearance with strange
+crowing noises, which pleased them and convulsed
+their parents; for Mrs. Bindle's fowls had become <i>the</i>
+joke of the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>"I must say I likes a man wots got a pleasant word
+for everyone," remarked Mrs. Sawney, some two
+hours later, as Mrs. Bindle picked up the clothes-basket
+containing the last of the day's wash, and made for
+the scullery door, "even when 'e ain't 'appy in 'is
+'ome life," she added, as the scullery door banged-to
+for the day, and Mrs. Grimps concurred as she disappeared,
+to catch-up with the day's work as best
+she could, and prepare the children's tea.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">III</p>
+
+<p>That evening at supper, Bindle heard what had been
+withheld from Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney&mdash;Mrs.
+Bindle's opinion of her neighbours. With great
+dexterity, she managed to link him up with their misdeeds.
+He should have got on as his brother-in-law,
+Mr. Hearty, had got on, and then she would not have
+been forced to reside in a neighbourhood so utterly
+dead to all sense of refinement and proper conduct.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle had come to regard Tuesdays as days of
+wrath, and he usually managed to slip out after supper
+with as little ostentation as possible. Reasoning that
+religion and cleanliness were productive of such mental
+disturbances, he was frankly for what he called "a
+dirty 'eathen"; but he was wise enough to keep his
+views to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were a man you'd stop it," she stormed,
+"allowing me to be insulted as I've been to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"But 'ow can I stop you an' them a-scrappin'?"
+he protested, with corrugated forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"You can go in and tell them that you won't have
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"But then Sawney an' Grimps would start on me."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what it is, you're afraid," she cried, triumphantly.
+"If you was a man you'd hit back; but you're
+not."</p>
+
+<p>"But I ain't a-goin' to start fightin' because some
+one says I don't wear&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Stop it!"</p>
+
+<p>And Bindle stopped it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you do something like Mr. Hearty?"
+demanded Mrs. Bindle, as he pushed back his chair
+and rose. She was determined not to be deprived
+of her scapegoat, at least not without another
+offensive.</p>
+
+<p>He paused before replying, making sure that his
+line of retreat was open. The greengrocering success
+of her brother-in-law was used by Mrs. Bindle as a whip
+of scorpions.</p>
+
+<p>"'Earty don't do things," he replied, sidling towards
+the door. "'E does people," and with footwork that
+would have made a champion fly-weight envious, he
+was out in the passage before Mrs. Bindle could retort.</p>
+
+<p>Long and late that night she pondered over the
+indignities to which she had been subjected during the
+day. There were wanton moments when she yearned
+to be able to display to the neighbours the whole of
+her laundry&mdash;and Bindle's. Herself a connoisseur of
+garments that passed through the wash-tub, she knew
+that those of her house could hold their own, as joyously
+white and playful in the breeze as any that her
+neighbours were able to produce.</p>
+
+<p>She had suffered with a still tongue; yet it had not
+turned aside wrath, particularly her own wrath.
+Instinctively, her thoughts reverted to the time when
+an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were regarded
+as legal tender.</p>
+
+<p>All that night and the next day she pondered.
+When Bindle returned on the Wednesday evening,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+he found her almost light-hearted. "Gospel Bells",
+Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn, was going with a rare
+swing, and during the meal that followed, she was
+bordering on the conversational.</p>
+
+<p>Several times he regarded her curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Somethink's up," he muttered; but, too wise in
+his experience, he made no endeavour to probe the
+mystery.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the week Mrs. Bindle spent every odd
+moment she could spare from her domestic duties in
+collecting what she mentally described as "rubbish".
+She went through each room with a toothcomb. By
+Saturday night, she had accumulated in the wash-house,
+a pile of odds and ends which, as Bindle said,
+would have been enough to start a rag-and-bone
+shop.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough, Mrs. Bindle did not resent his
+remark; instead she almost smiled, so marked was
+her expression of grim complacency.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday at chapel, she sang with a vigour and
+fervency that attracted to her the curious gaze of
+more than one pair of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. B.'s got somethink in 'er stockin'," mumbled
+Bindle, as he rose from the supper-table that night.
+"Never seen 'er so cheerio in all my puff. I 'ope it
+ain't drink."</p>
+
+<p>Monday morning dawned, and Mrs. Bindle was up
+an hour earlier than usual, still almost blithe in her
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't be surprised if she's a-goin' to run away
+with ole 'Earty," muttered Bindle, as he took from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+her almost gracious hands his third cup of tea at
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"You sings like a two-year-old, Lizzie," he ventured.
+"I like them little twiddley bits wot you been puttin'
+into that 'ymn."</p>
+
+<p>The "twiddley bits" to which Bindle referred was
+her rendering of "bells," as a word of three syllables,
+"be-e-ells."</p>
+
+<p>"You get on with your breakfast," was her retort;
+but there was about it neither reproach nor rancour.</p>
+
+<p>Again he looked at her curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't make 'er out these last few days," he
+muttered, as he rose and picked up his cap. "Somethink's
+up!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle proceeded to wash-up the breakfast
+things to the tune of "Hold the Fort." From time
+to time during the morning, she would glance out of
+the window to see if Mrs. Grimps, or Mrs. Sawney had
+yet begun to "hang-out".</p>
+
+<p>They were usually late; but this morning they were
+later than usual. It was after ten before Mrs. Grimps
+appeared with the first basket of wet clothes. She was
+followed a few minutes later by Mrs. Sawney.</p>
+
+<p>The two women exchanged greetings, the day was
+too busy a one for anything more.</p>
+
+<p>As they pegged the various items of the week's
+wash to their respective lines, Mrs. Bindle watched
+from the back-bedroom window, her eyes like points
+of steel, her lips a grim grey line. She was experiencing
+the sensations of the general who sees the enemy
+delivered into his hands.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As soon as Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had returned
+to their wash-tubs, Mrs. Bindle descended to the scullery,
+where lay the heap of rubbish she had collected
+during the previous week. With great deliberation
+she proceeded to stuff it into a clothes-basket, by means
+of which she transported the mass to the bottom of
+the garden, a proceeding which required several
+journeys.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps were too busily occupied
+to concern themselves with the movements of
+their neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>Her task completed, Mrs. Bindle returned to her
+domestic duties, and in due time ate a solitary dinner,
+Bindle being engaged too far away to admit of his
+sharing it with her. She then proceeded upstairs to
+perform her toilette, as on Monday afternoons she
+always arranged to go out "dressed". This in itself
+was a direct challenge to Fenton Street, which had
+to stay at home and attend to the cleansing of its
+linen.</p>
+
+<p>Her toilette finished, Mrs. Bindle slipped into the
+back bedroom. Below, her two neighbours were engaged
+in hanging-out the second instalment of their wash,
+the first batch having been gathered-in ready for the
+mangle. After that, they would eat their mid-day
+meal. Although no gossip, Mrs. Bindle was not unobservant,
+and she knew the movements of her neighbours
+as well as they knew hers.</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later, the front door of No. 7
+banged-to. Mrs. Bindle, in brown alpaca, a brown
+bonnet with a dash of purple, and biscuit-coloured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+gloves, was going to see her niece, Millie Dixon, née
+Hearty, with whom she had arranged to spend the
+afternoon.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">IV</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Sawney! Mrs. Sawney! Come and look
+at your clothes!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grimps, her hands on the top of the fence,
+shouted her thrilling appeal across the intervening
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney appeared, as if propelled from her
+scullery door by some unseen force.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she stood blinking stupidly, as dense
+volumes of smut-laden smoke ascended to the blueness
+of heaven from the garden of No. 7. It was only the
+smoke, however, that ascended. One glance at the
+piebald garments hanging from her linen-lines was
+sufficient to convince Mrs. Sawney of that.</p>
+
+<p>"It's that woman," she almost screamed, as she
+began to pound at the fence dividing her garden from
+that of Mrs. Bindle. "I'll show 'er."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but what about the&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Grimps
+broke-off, stifled by a volume of dense black smoke
+that curled across to her. "Look at them smuts."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle had taken the precaution of adding some
+paraffin and colza oil to her bonfire, which was now
+blazing merrily, sending forth an ever-increasing deluge
+of smuts, as if conscious of what was expected of it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney continued to bang on the fence, whilst
+Mrs. Grimps dashed through her house and proceeded
+to pound at Mrs. Bindle's front door with a vigour
+born of hate and desperation.</p>
+
+<p>"She's gorn out."</p>
+
+<p>The information was vouchsafed by a little boy in
+petticoats, who had toddled uncertainly from the
+other side of the street, and now stood clinging to the
+railings with grubby hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grimps scurried back again to the scene of
+disaster.</p>
+
+<p>She was just in time to see Mrs. Sawney take what
+appeared to be the tail-end of a header into Mrs. Bindle's
+back-garden, displaying in the process a pair of stockings
+that owed little to the wash-tub, and less to the
+darning-needle.</p>
+
+<p>"Get some water," she gasped, as she picked herself
+up and once more consigned her hosiery to the seclusion
+of her skirts. Mrs. Grimps dashed into the scullery.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later she re-appeared with a large pail,
+from which water slopped as she walked. With
+much grunting and a considerable wetting of her own
+clothes, she succeeded in passing it over the fence to
+her neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>With one hand grasping the handle and the other
+the rim at the base, Mrs. Sawney staggered towards
+the fire and inverted the pail. Then, with a scream,
+she dropped the pail, threw her apron over her head,
+and ran from the cloud of steam and the deluge of
+blacks that her rash act had occasioned.</p>
+
+<p>"'Urt yerself?" enquired Mrs. Grimps, solicitously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+as she gazed mournfully at her ruined "wash", upon
+which big flakes of black were descending like locusts
+upon the fair lands of Pharaoh.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney removed the apron from her head,
+and blinked up at the sky, as if to assure herself that
+the blessing of sight was still hers.</p>
+
+<p>"The wicked cat!" she vociferated, when she found
+that no damage had been done. "Come on, let's put
+it out," she exhorted as, with a swift movement, she
+picked up the pail and handed it over the fence to
+the waiting Mrs. Grimps.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, the fire was extinguished; but
+the washing was ruined.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney gazed across the fence at a dishevelled
+caricature of Mrs. Grimps, with the full consciousness
+that she herself must look even worse. She also
+realised that she had to make the return journey
+over the fence, under the critical eyes of Mrs.
+Grimps, and that to climb a fence without an
+exposure of leg was an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>Both women were wet to the skin, as neither had
+proved expert in the handing of brimming pails of
+water over a wooden fence; both were spotted like
+the pard; both were in their hearts breathing dire
+vengeance upon the perpetrator of the outrage, who
+just at that moment was alighting from a tram at
+Hammersmith.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+<p>Throughout that afternoon, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs.
+Grimps waited; grim-lipped and hard-eyed they waited.
+Fenton Street was to see something that it had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+even dreamed of. Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps had
+decided unanimously to "show 'er."</p>
+
+<p>Their offspring had been instructed that, at the sight
+of Mrs. Bindle, they were to return hot-foot and report.</p>
+
+<p>The children had told their friends, and their friends
+had told their mothers, with the result that not only
+Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps; but every housewife in
+Fenton Street was on the qui vive.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after six there were cries of "Here she comes,"
+as if Mrs. Bindle had been the Boat Race, followed
+by a sudden stampede of children.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps rushed to action-quarters.
+Mrs. Sawney gave a stir to a pail of blacklead
+and water behind the front door, whilst Mrs.
+Grimps seized a soft broom, which she had saturated
+in water used for washing-up the dinner-things.</p>
+
+<p>The children clustered round the gate, and hung on
+to the railings. Housewives came to their doors, or
+appeared at their bedroom windows. Fenton Street
+loved Drama, the bigger the "D" with which it was
+spelled, the more they enjoyed it.</p>
+
+<p>Behind their front doors, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs.
+Grimps waited and watched. Suddenly the crowd
+that had attached itself to the railings began to melt
+away, and the babel of clattering voices died down.
+Several women were seen to leave their garden-gates
+and walk up the street. Still the two grim-faced
+women waited behind their "street-doors."</p>
+
+<p>At length, as the last child left the railings and tore
+up the street, both women decided that something
+must have happened.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sight of Mrs. Sawney at her door brought Mrs.
+Grimps to hers, just as Harriet, the nine years old
+daughter of Mrs. Sawney, rushed up breathless.</p>
+
+<p>"She's comin'," gasped the child, whereat both
+women disappeared, Mrs. Sawney to grasp the handle
+of her pail, and Mrs. Grimps to seize her broom.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Bindle appeared, the centre of an eddying
+mass of children, with a few women on the outer
+fringe, she was carrying in her arms a child of about
+five, who was whimpering pitifully. Her bonnet had
+slipped back, her right hand, from which the biscuit-coloured
+glove had been removed, was stained with
+blood, whilst her umbrella was being carried, as if it
+were a sacred relic, by a curly-headed little lad who
+was living his hour.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the procession, Mrs. Sawney let the
+handle of her pail fall with a clang, whilst Mrs. Grimps
+dropped her broom.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my 'Ector," she screamed, as she bolted down
+the garden path. "Oh, my God! 'e's dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Get some hot water," ordered Mrs. Bindle, as she
+pushed the mother aside and entered the gate. "He's
+cut his leg."</p>
+
+<p>Followed by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Grimps bolted into
+the house. There was something in Mrs. Bindle's
+tone that brooked of no delay.</p>
+
+<p>Watched by Mrs. Grimps, Mrs. Sawney, and several
+of their friends, Mrs. Bindle washed the wound and
+bound it up with clean white rag, in place of her own
+blood-soaked handkerchief, and she did her work with
+the thoroughness with which she did everything.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When she had finished, she took the child in her
+arms, and for an hour soothed it with the assurance
+that it was "the bravest little precious in all the world."
+When she made to transfer her burden to its mother's
+arms, the uproar that ensued decided Mrs. Bindle to
+continue her ministrations.</p>
+
+<p>It was ten o'clock before she finally left Mrs. Grimps's
+house, and she did so without a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'd 'ave thought it!" remarked Mrs. Sawney,
+as Mrs. Bindle closed the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"She's got a way with kids," admitted Mrs. Grimps.
+"I will say that for 'er," and in turning back along
+the dark hall, she fell over the broom with which she
+had intended to greet her neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sawney returned to her own house and hurled
+a saucepan at Sandy, a circumstance which kept him
+from home for two days and three nights&mdash;he was not
+a cat to take undue risks.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE ENTERTAINS</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"Bindle!" Mrs. Bindle stepped down from
+a chair, protected by her ironing-blanket,
+on which she had been standing to replace
+a piece of holly that had fallen from a picture.</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at the mid-Victorian riot about her with
+obvious pride; it constituted her holy of holies. Upon
+it she had laboured for days with soap-and-water and
+furniture-polish, with evergreen and coloured candles,
+to render it worthy of the approaching festivity. She
+had succeeded only in emphasising its uncompromising
+atmosphere of coldness and angularity.</p>
+
+<p>Antimacassars seemed to shiver self-consciously
+upon the backs of stamped-plush chairs, photo-frames,
+and what she called "knick-knacks," stared at one
+another in wide-eyed desolation; whilst chains of
+coloured paper, pale green and yellow predominating,
+stretched in bilious festoons from picture-nail to
+picture-nail.</p>
+
+<p>On the mantelpiece, in wine-coloured lustres, which
+were Mrs. Bindle's especial glory, two long candles
+reared aloft their pink nakedness. They were never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+to be lit and they knew it; chilly, pink and naked
+they would remain, eventually to be packed away
+once more in the cardboard-box, from which for years
+they had been taken to grace each successive festivity.</p>
+
+<p>It had always been Bindle's ambition to light these
+candles, which were probably the most ancient pieces
+of petroleum-wax in the kingdom; but he lacked
+the moral courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Funny thing you can't be clean without stinkin'
+like this," he had mumbled that morning, as he sniffed
+the air, reeking of turpentine with an underlying
+motif of yellow-soap. "I suppose 'appiness is like
+drink," he added, "it takes people different ways."</p>
+
+<p>Passing over to the sideboard, Mrs. Bindle gazed
+down at the refreshments: sausage-rolls, sandwiches,
+rock-cakes, blanc-mange, jellies, three-cornered tarts,
+exuding their contents at every joint, chocolate-shape,
+and other delicacies.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre stood a large open jam-tart made on
+a meat-dish. It was Mrs. Bindle's masterpiece, a
+tribute alike to earth and to heaven. On the jam,
+in letters contrived out of strips of pastry, appeared
+the exhortation, "Prepare to Meet Thy God."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle had gasped at the sight of this superlative
+work of art and religion. "That's a funny sort o'
+way to give a cove a appetite," he had murmured.
+"If it 'adn't been Mrs. B., I'd 'ave said it was a joke."</p>
+
+<p>It was with obvious satisfaction that Mrs. Bindle
+viewed her handiwork. At the sight of an iced-cake,
+sheltering itself behind a plate of bananas, she smiled.
+Here again her devotional instincts had triumphed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+On the uneven white surface, in irregular letters of
+an uncertain blue, was the statement, "The Wages
+of Sin is Death."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, it ain't my idea of 'appiness."</p>
+
+<p>She span round to find Bindle, who had entered
+unheard, gazing dubiously at the tart bearing the
+disconcerting legend.</p>
+
+<p>"What's not your idea of happiness?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>He grinned genially across at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd like beer-bottles on the mantelpiece, I suppose,"
+she continued, "and clay pipes and spittoons
+and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me, Mrs. B.," he retorted; "no one ain't
+never known me miss the fire-place yet."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's lips tightened, as if she were striving
+to restrain the angry words that were eager to leap
+out.</p>
+
+<p>She had planned a musical evening, with the object
+of assisting her brother-in-law in his aspirations as
+trainer of the choir at the Alton Road Chapel, a
+post which had recently fallen vacant.</p>
+
+<p>By inviting some of the more humble members of
+the choir, those on a higher social plane than her own
+would scarcely be likely to accept, Mrs. Bindle had
+thought to further Mr. Hearty's candidature.</p>
+
+<p>She recognised that their influence would be indirect
+in its action; but even that, she decided, would be an
+asset.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty had readily consented to lend his harmonium,
+and had sent it round by his van. It took
+two men and a boy, together with Mr. Hearty and Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+Bindle, a long time to persuade it along the narrow
+passage. Here it had incontinently stuck for nearly
+an hour. It was not until Bindle returned, to bring
+his professional experience to bear, that it had been
+coaxed into the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas was near at hand, and for weeks past
+the choir had been working under forced-draught,
+practising carols. That had given Mrs. Bindle the
+idea of devoting her evening entirely to seasonable
+music.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot jer call me for?" demanded Bindle presently,
+remembering the reason of his presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget to get a pail of coals and put it in
+the kitchen," she ordered.</p>
+
+<p>"We shan't want no coals, Mrs. B., with all that 'ot
+stuff we got a-comin'," he muttered lugubriously.
+"Why ain't we got a bit o' mistletoe?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting," she retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Disgustin'!" he cried innocently. "There ain't
+nothink disgustin' in a bit o' mistletoe."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have such things in my house," she
+announced with decision. "You've got a lewd mind."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't nothink lood in kissin' a gal under the
+mistletoe," he demurred, "or under anythink else,"
+he added as an after-thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You're nasty-minded, Bindle, and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, wot are we goin' to do at a party if there
+ain't goin' to be no kissin'?" he persisted, looking
+about him with unwonted despondency.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hearty has lent us his harmonium!" she
+said with unction, gazing reverently across at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+instrument, which was the pride of her brother-in-law's
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>"But wot's the use of an 'armonium," he complained.
+"You can't play 'unt the slipper, or postman's knock
+with an 'armonium."</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to sing."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot, 'ymns?" he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"No, carols," was the retort. "It's Christmas,"
+she added as if by way of explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it don't look like it, and it don't smell like
+it." He sniffed the atmosphere with obvious disgust.
+"Puts me in mind of 'orse-oils," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, go on," she retorted tartly. "You're
+not hurting me, if you think it." She drew in her lips
+and crossed her hands in front of her, with Mrs. Bindle
+a manifestation of Christian resignation.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to 'urt you, Lizzie; but I ask you,
+can you see me a-singin' carols?" He turned towards
+her a despondent eye of interrogation. "Me, at my
+age?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not asked to sing. You can go out and
+spend the evening swearing and drinking with your
+low companions." She moved over to the mantelpiece,
+and adjusted one of her beloved pink candles. "You'd
+only spoil the music," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"If there wasn't no music there wouldn't be no
+religion," he grumbled. "It's 'armoniums in this
+world and 'arps in the next. I'd sooner be a pussyfoot
+than play an 'arp."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle ignored the remark, and proceeded to
+re-pile a plate of sausage-rolls to a greater symmetry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+flicking an imaginary speck of dust from a glass-jug
+of lemonade.</p>
+
+<p>"Now mind," she cried, as he walked towards the
+door, "I won't have you spoiling my evening, you'd
+better go out."</p>
+
+<p>"An 'usband's cross-roads, or why Bindle left 'ome,"
+he grinned as he turned, winked at the right-hand
+pink candle and disappeared, leaving Mrs. Bindle to
+gaze admiringly at her handiwork. She had laboured
+very hard in preparing for the evening's festivities.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>Half-way down the stairs, Mrs. Bindle paused to
+listen. Her quick ears had detected the sound of
+voices at the back-door, and what was undoubtedly
+the clink of bottles. Continuing her descent, she
+entered the kitchen, pausing just inside the door.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, 'Op-o'-my-thumb. A dozen it is,"
+she heard Bindle remark to someone in the outer
+darkness. There was a shrill "Good-night," and
+Bindle entered the kitchen from the scullery, carrying
+a beer-bottle under each arm and one in either hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was that?" she demanded, her eyes fixed
+upon the bottles.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! jest a nipper wot 'ad brought somethink for
+me," he said with assumed unconcern.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he bring?" she demanded, her eyes
+still fixed on the bottles.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some beer wot I ordered."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"To drink." He looked at her as if surprised at
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suppose you'd bought it to wash in," was
+the angry retort. "There are four bottles in the
+cupboard. They'll last till Saturday. Why did you
+order more?" Mrs. Bindle was obviously suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>"P'raps somebody'll get dry to-night," he temporised.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you tell me any of your wicked lies, Bindle,"
+she cried angrily. "You know they're all temperance.
+How many did you order?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, jest a few," he said, depositing the bottles on
+the lower shelf of the dresser. "Nothink like 'avin' a
+bottle or two up yer sleeve."</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you got your best suit on?" She
+regarded with disapproval the blue suit and red
+necktie Bindle was wearing. Her eyes dropped to
+the white cuffs that only a careful manipulation of his
+thumbs prevented from slipping off altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it the night of the party?" he enquired
+innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you that I won't have you come in, you
+with your common ways and low talk."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," he replied cheerfully. "I'm
+a-goin' to sit in the kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>"And what good will that do you?" she demanded
+suspiciously. "Another time, when I'm alone, you
+can go out fast enough. Now because I've got a
+few friends coming, nothing will move you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I want to 'ear the music," he protested.
+"P'raps I'll get to like carols if I 'ear enough of 'em,"
+he added, with the air of one who announces that
+some day he hopes to acquire a taste for castor-oil.</p>
+
+<p>"You're enough to try the patience of a saint," she
+cried, still eyeing the bottles of beer. "I suppose
+you're up to some devilment. It wouldn't be you to
+let me enjoy myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I likes to see you enjoyin' yerself, Lizzie," he
+protested. "'Ow'd you like ole Ginger to run in
+an'&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"If that man enters my house I'll insult him!"
+she cried, her eyes glinting angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"That ain't easy," he replied cheerfully, "unless you
+was to drink 'is beer. That always gets 'is rag
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have that man in my house," she stormed.
+"You shall not pollute my home with your foul-mouthed,
+public-house companions. I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ole Ging is all right," Bindle assured her, as he
+proceeded to fetch four more bottles from the scullery.
+"All you got to do is to give 'im some beer, play 'All
+is Forgiven Wot 'Appened on Peace Night,' an' let
+'im stamp 'is feet to the chorus, an' 'e's one of the
+cheerfullest coves wot you'll find."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you bring him here and see what I'll do,"
+she announced darkly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Mrs. B., don't you worry. I jest
+asked 'Uggles to run round an' keep me company, and
+Wilkie may drop in if 'e ain't too busy coughin'; but
+they shan't get mixed up with the canaries&mdash;they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+won't want to after wot I'm goin' to tell 'em, an' we'll
+all be as quiet as mice."</p>
+
+<p>"If you bring any of your friends into the parlour,
+Bindle," she cried, "I'll turn the gas out."</p>
+
+<p>"Naughty!" he admonished, wagging at her a
+playful forefinger. "I ain't a-goin' to allow&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop it!" and with that she bounced out of the
+kitchen and dashed upstairs to the bedroom, banging
+the door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't women funny," he grumbled, as he fetched
+the remaining four bottles of beer from the scullery,
+and placed them upon the shelf of the dresser. "Nice
+ole row there'd 'ave been if I'd said anythink about
+turnin' out the gas. That's why ole 'Earty's so keen
+on them choir practices. I bet they got a penny-in-the-slot
+meter, an' everybody takes bloomin' good care
+to leave all their coppers at 'ome."</p>
+
+<p>Overhead, Mrs. Bindle could be heard giving expression
+to her feelings in the opening and shutting of
+drawers.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!" he sighed philosophically, "I suppose
+you can't 'ave everythink, as the cove said
+when 'e found the lodger 'ad gone orf with 'is
+trousers on Bank 'Oliday," and he proceeded to
+gather together two cracked tumblers, which had
+been censored by Mrs. Bindle as unfit for her guests,
+a large white mug, with a pink band and the remains
+of a view of Margate, and a pint jug with a pink
+butterfly on the spout.</p>
+
+<p>"We're a-goin' to enjoy ourselves, any-old-'ow," he
+murmured as, picking up a meat-dish from the dresser,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+he slipped into the parlour, returning a moment later
+with it piled with rock-cakes, sandwiches and sausage-rolls.
+These he hid on the bottom shelf of the dresser,
+placing a pair of boots in front of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Jest in time," he muttered, as Mrs. Bindle was
+heard descending the stairs. "It's&mdash;'Ullo!" he broke
+off, "'ere's the first appetite," as a knock was heard
+at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>For the next ten minutes, Mrs. Bindle was busy
+conducting her guests upstairs to "take off their
+things." Their escorts waited in the passage, clearing
+their throats, or stroking their chins. Convention
+demanded that they should wait to make a formal
+entry into the parlour with their wives.</p>
+
+<p>With his ear pressed against the kitchen door, Bindle
+listened with interest, endeavouring to identify from
+their voices the arrivals as they passed.</p>
+
+<p>By ten minutes past seven, the sounds in the passage
+had ceased&mdash;the guests had all come. In Mrs. Bindle's
+circle it was customary to take literally the time
+mentioned in the invitation, and to apologise for even
+a few minutes' lateness.</p>
+
+<p>In order that the Montagues should not become
+confused with the Capulets, Bindle had taken the
+precaution of asking his own friends to come to the
+back door. He had added that the beer would be in
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle had always been immovable in her
+determination that Bindle's "low public-house companions"
+should not have an opportunity of "insulting"
+her friends from the Alton Road Chapel.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With Mrs. Bindle the first quarter-of-an-hour of her
+rare social gatherings was always a period of anguish
+and uncertainty. Although everybody knew everybody
+else, all were constrained and ill-at-ease.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lamb kept twirling her rolled-gold bracelet
+round her lace-mittened wrist, smiling vacantly the
+while. Miss Death seemed unable to keep her hard grey
+eyes, set far too closely together, from the refreshment
+sideboard, whilst Mrs. Dykes, a tiny woman in a fawn
+skirt and a coral-pink blouse, was continually feeling
+the back of her head, as if anticipating some
+catastrophe to her hair.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty, who began in a bright blue satin blouse,
+and ended in canary-coloured stockings thrust into
+cloth shoes with paste buckles, beat her breast and
+struggled for breath. Mr. Hearty was negative, conversationally
+he was a bankrupt, whilst Mrs. Stitchley
+was garrulous and with a purpose. She was bent
+upon talking down the consciousness that she had
+not been invited.</p>
+
+<p>Her excuse for coming, at least the excuse she made
+to herself, was that of chaperoning her daughter, a
+near-sighted, shapeless girl, with no chest and a muddy
+complexion, who never had and never would require
+such an attention.</p>
+
+<p>The others were just neuter, except Mr. Thimbell,
+whose acute nervousness and length of limb rendered
+him a nuisance.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was conscious that she was looking her
+best in a dark blue alpaca dress, with a cream-coloured
+lace yoke, which modesty had prompted her to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+lined with the material of the dress. To her, the
+display of any portion of her person above the instep,
+or below the feminine equivalent of the "Adam's
+apple," was a tribute to the Mammon of Unrighteousness,
+and her dressmaker was instructed accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>She moved about the room, trying to make everyone
+feel at home, and succeeding only in emphasising the
+fact that they were all out.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was anxious to get down to the serious
+business of the evening; still the social amenities
+had to be observed. There must be a preliminary
+period devoted to conversation.</p>
+
+<p>After a quarter-of-an-hour's endeavour to exchange
+the ideas which none of them possessed, Mrs. Bindle
+moved over to Mr. Hearty and whispered something,
+at the same time glancing across at the harmonium.
+There was an immediate look of interest and expectancy
+on faces which, a moment before, had been
+blank and apathetic.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goslett, a little man with high cheekbones and
+a criminal taste in neckwear, cleared his throat; Mr.
+Hearty surreptitiously slipped into his mouth an acid
+drop, which he had just taken from his waistcoat
+pocket; Mr. Dykes, a long, thin man, who in his
+youth had been known to his contemporaries as
+"Razor," drew his handkerchief with a flourish, and
+tested Mrs. Bindle's walls as if he were a priest before
+Jericho.</p>
+
+<p>Some difficulty arose as to who should play Mr.
+Hearty's beloved instrument. Mrs. Stitchley made it
+clear that she expected her daughter, Mabel, to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+asked. Mrs. Bindle, however, decided that Mrs.
+Snarch, a colourless woman who sang contralto (her
+own contralto) and sniffed when she was not singing
+contralto, should preside; her influence with her
+fellow-members of the choir was likely to be greater.
+Thus in the first ten minutes Mrs. Bindle scored two
+implacable enemies and one dubious friend.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Snarch took her seat at the harmonium,
+fidgetted about with her skirts and blinked near-sightedly
+at the book of carols, which seemed disinclined
+to remain open. The others grouped themselves
+about her.</p>
+
+<p>There was a medley of strange sounds, as each member
+of the party took the necessary steps to ensure
+purity of vocal tone. Added to this, Mr. Dykes pulled
+his collar away from his throat and stretched his neck
+upwards, as if to clear a passage for the sound he
+intended to send forth. Mr. Goslett pushed his sandy
+moustache up from his full lips with the back of his
+right forefinger, whilst Miss Stitchley moistened and
+remoistened her thin, colourless lips.</p>
+
+<p>Then they joined together in song.</p>
+
+<p>After a preliminary carol, in which no one seemed
+to take any particular interest, they got off well
+together with "Good King Wenceslas," a prime
+favourite at the Alton Road Chapel.</p>
+
+<p>This evening it proved an enormous success.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stitchley's shrillness clashed with Mrs. Bindle's
+sharpness more than in the preceding carol. Mr.
+Hearty shut his eyes more tightly and was woollier,
+Mr. Dykes got more breath behind his boom, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+Mrs. Dykes made more mistakes in her "harmony."
+Mr. Goslett raised his head higher, looking more
+than ever like a chicken drinking, whilst Miss Death's
+thin, upper notes seemed to pierce even Mr. Dykes's
+boom, just as they put Miss Lamb, always uncertain
+as to pitch, even further off her stroke.</p>
+
+<p>Still, everyone enjoyed it immensely. Even Mrs.
+Stitchley, who confessed that she was "no 'and at
+singin'," croaked a few husky notes, as she sat acutely
+upright, due to a six-and-elevenpenny pair of stays
+she had bought that afternoon, nodding her head and
+beating time.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley never lost an opportunity of making
+clear her position in regard to music.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm musical, my dear," she would say. "It's in
+the fambly; but I don't sing, I 'as spasms, you know."
+She volunteered this information much as a man
+might seek to excuse his inability to play the French
+horn by explaining that he is addicted to bass
+viol.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that's what I call a carol," said Mrs. Stitchley,
+endeavouring to prevent the upper portion of her stay-busk
+from burying itself in her flesh. Then, with
+sudden inspiration, she cried, "Encore! Encore!"
+and made a motion to clap her hands; but the stay-busk
+took the opportunity of getting in a vicious dig.
+With a little yelp of pain, Mrs. Stitchley's hands flew
+to her rescue.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was too pleased with "Good King
+Wenceslas" to trouble about Mrs. Stitchley's stay-busk.
+The word "encore," however, had given them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+an idea. Mr. Hearty looked interrogatingly at Mrs.
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think&mdash;&mdash;" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we have it again?" she queried, and there
+was a chorus of pleased acquiescence. Everybody
+was determined to put a little bit more into the encore
+than into the original rendering. There was only one
+dissentient voice, that of Mr. Dykes, who was
+eager for "The First Noël," which gave him such a
+chance for individual effort. When out with the
+Chapel Christmas singers, Mr. Dykes had been known
+to awaken as many as six streets with a single verse
+of that popular carol.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle almost smiled. Her party was proving
+a success.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley, still holding the top of her stay-busk
+in her left hand, nodded approval, her beady little
+eyes fixed upon the singers. She was awaiting an
+opportunity to bring from her pocket a half-quartern
+bottle containing what, if she had been caught drinking
+it, she would have described as clove-water, taken
+medicinally.</p>
+
+<p>To give colour to her assertion, she always chewed a
+clove after each reference to the bottle.</p>
+
+<p>At The Golden Horse, Mrs. Stitchley's clove-water
+was known as Old Tom Special.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour Mrs. Bindle's guests sang, encoring
+themselves with enthusiasm. Mr. Dykes got in his
+famous "Noël," he pronounced it "No-ho-hell," and
+everyone else seemed satisfied, if a little sore of
+throat.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was half-past eight when Mrs. Bindle decided that
+the time had come for refreshments.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the evening her ears had been keenly
+alert for sounds from the kitchen; but beyond a suppressed
+hum of voices, she could detect nothing; still
+she was ill-at-ease. If Mrs. Hearty, for instance, knew
+that Bindle was in the house, she would certainly
+go over to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>In the matter of catering for her guests Mrs. Bindle
+had nothing to learn. She was a good cook and
+delighted in providing well for those she entertained.
+Her sausage-rolls, straightforward affairs in which
+the sausage had something more than a walking-on
+part, were famous among her friends. Her blanc-mange,
+jam puffs, rock-cakes, and sandwiches had
+already established her reputation with those who had
+been privileged to taste them. She basked in the
+sunshine of the praise lavished on what she provided.
+Without it she would have felt that her party was
+a failure.</p>
+
+<p>This evening there was no lack of approval, cordially
+expressed. Mrs. Stitchley, who purposely had partaken
+of a light luncheon and no tea, was particularly
+loud in her encomiums, preluding each sausage-roll
+she took, from the sixth onwards, with some fresh
+adjective.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was almost happy.</p>
+
+<p>She was in the act of pouring out a glass of lemonade
+for Miss Lamb, when suddenly she paused. An
+unaccustomed sound from the kitchen had arrested
+her hand. Others heard it too, and the hum of con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>versation
+died away into silence, broken only by Mr.
+Hearty's mastication of a sausage-roll.</p>
+
+<p>Through the dividing wall came the sound of a concertina.
+Mrs. Bindle put down the jug and turned
+towards the door. As she did so a thin, nasal voice
+broke into song:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For 'e was oiled in every joint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A bobby came up who was standin' point.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He blew 'is whistle to summon more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bill got 'ome on the point of 'is jaw.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then 'e screamed, an' kicked, an' bit their knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As each grabbed a leg or an arm by degrees.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' that's 'ow Bill Morgan was taken 'ome<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the night of 'is first wife's funeral.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The verse was followed by a full-throated chorus,
+accompanied by a pounding as if someone were hurling
+bricks about.</p>
+
+<p>After that came silence; but for the hum of conversation,
+above which rose Bindle's voice forbidding
+further singing until "them next door 'ave 'ad a go."</p>
+
+<p>The guests looked at one another in amazement.
+The set expression of Mrs. Bindle's face hardened,
+and the lines of her mouth became grim. Her first
+instinct had been to rush to the kitchen; but she
+decided to wait. She did not want a scene whilst
+her guests were there.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the carol-singers returned to their plates
+and glasses, and Mr. Hearty's mastication was once
+more heard in their midst. Mr. Hearty always ate
+with relish.</p>
+
+<p>Unobserved by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Hearty stole out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+the parlour on her way to investigate; a minute later
+Mrs. Stitchley followed. The solitude of the passage
+gave her an admirable opportunity of finishing the
+"clove-water" she had brought with her.</p>
+
+<p>When everyone had assured Mrs. Bindle, in answer
+to her pressing invitation to refresh themselves still
+further, that they "really couldn't, not if she were
+to pay them," she turned once more to Mr. Hearty
+for the necessary encouragement to start another
+carol.</p>
+
+<p>Their first effort, however, clearly showed that Mrs.
+Bindle's refreshments had taken the edge off their
+singing. Miss Stitchley had lost much of her shrillness,
+Mrs. Bindle was less sharp and Mr. Hearty more
+woolly. Mr. Dykes's boom was but a wraith of its
+former self, proving the truth of Mrs. Dykes's laughing
+remark that if he ate so many of Mrs. Bindle's sausage-rolls
+he wouldn't be able to sing at all. Only Miss Death
+was up to form, her shrill soprano still cleaving the
+atmosphere like a javelin.</p>
+
+<p>As the last chords of the carol died away, the concertina
+in the kitchen took up the running, followed
+a minute later by the same voice as before, singing
+nasally about the adventures of a particularly rollicking
+set of boon-companions who knew neither care nor
+curfew.</p>
+
+<p>At the first sound, Mrs. Bindle moved swiftly to
+the door, where she paused uncertainly. She was in
+a quandary. Her conception of good manners did
+not admit of a hostess leaving her guests; still something
+had to be done.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the conclusion of the verse the voice ceased;
+but the concertina wailed on. Mrs. Bindle drew
+breath. Her guests gazed at one another in a dazed
+sort of way. Then with a crash came the chorus,
+rendered with enthusiasm:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For 'ome's the only place for weary men like us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we 'aven't got the money to pay for a bus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For it's only 'alf-past two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' it won't be three just yet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So we'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' lay down in the passage to be out of the wet.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The applause that followed was annihilating. Accompanying
+it again was the curious banging sound
+which Mrs. Bindle had noticed before. She was sure
+she recognised amid the cries of approval, the sound
+of a woman's voice. That decided her. She had
+already noted the absence of Mrs. Hearty and Mrs.
+Stitchley.</p>
+
+<p>Without so much as an apology to her guests, who
+stood still gazing blankly at one another, Mrs. Bindle
+slipped out into the passage, closing the door behind
+her, much to the disappointment of the others.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later she threw open the kitchen door,
+conscious that one of the most dramatic moments of
+her life was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>Through a grey film of tobacco smoke she saw
+half-a-dozen men, one seated on the floor, another
+on the fender, and two on the table. All were smoking.</p>
+
+<p>About the room were dotted bottles and various<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+drinking vessels, mostly cups, whilst on the mantelpiece
+were Bindle's white cuffs, discarded on account
+of their inconvenient habit of slipping off at every
+movement of his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty was seated in front of the dresser,
+holding a glass of beer in one hand and beating
+her breast with the other, whilst opposite to her
+sat Mrs. Stitchley, one hand still clutching the top
+of her stay-busk, an idiotic smirk upon her moist
+face.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Bindle gazed upon the scene, she was conscious
+of a feeling of disappointment; no one seemed
+to regard her presence as any deviation from the
+normal. Mrs. Stitchley looked up and nodded.
+Bindle deliberately avoided her eye.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's attention became focussed upon the
+man seated on her fender. In his hands he grasped
+a concertina, before him were stretched a pair of thin
+legs in tight blue trousers. Above a violent blue
+necktie there rose a pasty face, terminating in a quiff
+of amazing dimensions, which glistened greasily in the
+gaslight. His heavy-lidded eyes were half-closed,
+whilst in his mouth he held a cigarette, the end of
+which was most unwholesomely chewed. His whole
+demeanour was that of a man who had not yet realised
+that the curtain had risen upon a new act in the
+drama.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Bindle appeared at the kitchen door, the
+concertina once more began to speak. A moment
+later the musician threw back his head and gave
+tongue, like a hound baying at the moon:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For I love my mother, love 'er with all my 'eart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can see 'er now on the doorstep, the day we 'ad to part.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man that's got a tanner, can always get a wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a mother is just a treasure that comes once in a life.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Now then, ladies and gents, chorus if <i>you</i> please,"
+he cried.</p>
+
+<p>They did please, and soon Mrs. Bindle's kitchen
+echoed with a full-throated rendering of:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We all love mother, love her all the time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For there ain't no other who seems to us the same.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From babyhood to manhood, she watches o'er our lives,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For it's mother, mother, mother, bless the dear old name.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was a doleful refrain, charged with cockney
+melancholy; yet there could be no doubt about the
+enthusiasm of the singers. Mrs. Hearty spilled
+beer over her blue satin bosom, as a result of the
+energy with which she beat time; Mrs. Stitchley's
+hand, the one not grasping her stay-busk, was also
+beating time, different time from Mrs. Hearty's, whilst
+two light-coloured knees rose and fell with the regularity
+of piston-rods, solving for Mrs. Bindle the
+mystery of the sounds like the tossing about of bricks
+she had heard in the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Ginger was joining in the chorus!</p>
+
+<p>As the singer started the second verse, Mrs. Bindle
+was conscious that someone was behind her. She
+turned to find Miss Stitchley standing at her shoulder.
+A moment later she realised that the little passage
+was overflowing with carol-singers.</p>
+
+<p>Still she made no sign, not even when Miss Stitchley
+slipped past her and took up a position behind her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+mother's chair. Mrs. Bindle realised that she was
+faced with a delicate situation.</p>
+
+<p>The second chorus still further complicated matters.
+Mrs. Bindle was sure she heard the haunting refrain
+mumbled from behind her. She turned quickly;
+but treason came from the other direction. Suddenly
+Miss Stitchley burst into song, and the passage,
+throwing aside its hesitation, joined in, softly it is
+true, still it joined in.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, everybody!" cried Mrs. Stitchley, when
+the chorus ceased, momentarily forgetful that it was
+Mrs. Bindle's kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't 'e clever," she added, looking admiringly
+at the musician, who glanced up casually at the mistress
+of the house. Art Wiggins was accustomed to
+feminine worship and unlimited beer; he regarded
+them as the natural tributes to his genius.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, the 'ole lot," cried Bindle cheerily, as he
+proceeded to unscrew the stopper of a bottle. "'Ave a
+wet, Art," he cried, addressing the vocalist. "You
+deserves it."</p>
+
+<p>The remainder of the parlour-party filtered into
+the kitchen, and Mrs. Bindle realised the anguish of
+a Louis XVIII. Her legions had gone over to the
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"Now this," remarked Mrs. Stitchley to Ginger a
+quarter-of-an-hour later, "is wot I calls a cosy
+evenin'."</p>
+
+<p>To which Ginger grumbled something about not
+"'oldin' wiv women."</p>
+
+<p>Art Wiggins was the hero of the occasion. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+smoked halves of endless cigarettes, chewing the remainder;
+he drank beer like a personified Sahara, and a
+continuous stream of song flowed from his lips.</p>
+
+<p>When at length he paused to eat, Mrs. Stitchley
+took up the running, urged on by Bindle, to whom she
+had confided that, as a girl, she had achieved what was
+almost fame with, "I Heard the Mavis Singing."</p>
+
+<p>Art Wiggins did not know the tune; but was not
+to be deterred.</p>
+
+<p>"Carry on, mother," he cried through a mouthful
+of ham-sandwich, "I'll pick it up."</p>
+
+<p>The result was that Art played something strongly
+reminiscent of "Bubbles," whilst Mrs. Stitchley was
+telling how she had heard the mavis singing, to the tune
+of "Swanee." It was a great success until Art,
+weary of being so long out of the picture, threw
+"Bubbles," "Swanee," Mrs. Stitchley and the mavis
+overboard, and broke into a narrative about a young
+man of the name of Bert, who had become enamoured
+of a lady whose abbreviated petticoats made an excellent
+rhyme for the hero's name.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley continued singing; but Art and Bert
+and the young lady of his choice, plus the concertina,
+left her little or no chance.</p>
+
+<p>Like a figure of retribution Mrs. Bindle stood in the
+doorway, hard of eye and grim of lip, whilst just behind
+her Mr. Hearty picked nervously at the quicks of his
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>The other guests had proved opportunists. They
+had thrown over the sacred for the profane.</p>
+
+<p>They came out particularly strong in the choruses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">III</p>
+
+<p>"I never remember sich a evenin', my dear," was
+Mrs. Stitchley's valediction. "Stitchley'll be sorry
+'e missed it," she added, indifferent to the fact that
+he had not been invited.</p>
+
+<p>She was the last to go, just as she had been the first
+to arrive. Throughout the evening she had applauded
+every effort of Art Wiggins to add to what Bindle
+called "the 'armony of the evenin'."</p>
+
+<p>"I have enjoyed it, Mrs. Bindle," said Miss Stitchley.
+"It was lovely."</p>
+
+<p>With these encomiums ringing in her ears, and
+confirmed by what she herself had seen and heard,
+Mrs. Bindle closed the door and returned to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle watched her uncertainly as she tidied up
+the place, whilst he proceeded to arrange upon the
+dresser the beer-bottles, sixteen in number and all
+empty.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule he could anticipate Mrs. Bindle's mood;
+but to-night he was frankly puzzled. When he had
+asked Huggles and Wilkes to drop in "for a jaw,"
+he had not foreseen that on the way they would
+encounter Ginger, his cousin Art Wiggins and
+two bosom friends of Art, nor could he be expected
+to foresee that Art went nowhere without his concertina.
+It was as much part of him as his elaborate
+quiff.</p>
+
+<p>Their arrival had inspired Bindle with something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+akin to panic. For a long time he had striven to mute
+Art's musical restiveness. At length he had been
+over-ruled by the others, and Art had burst into song
+about Bill Morgan and his first wife's funeral. After
+that, as well try to dam Niagara as seal those lips of
+song.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's grim silence as she moved about the
+kitchen disconcerted Bindle. He was busy speculating
+as to what was behind it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Been a 'appy sort of evenin'," he remarked at
+length, as he proceeded to knock the ashes out of his
+pipe.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle made no response; but continued to
+gather together the plates and glasses and place them
+in two separate bowls in the sink.</p>
+
+<p>"Seemed to enjoy theirselves," he ventured a few
+minutes later. "Joined in the choruses too."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle's remark was like a shot fired at a waterspout,
+Mrs. Bindle's wrath burst its bounds and engulfed him.</p>
+
+<p>"One of these days you'll kill me," she shrilled,
+dropping into a chair, "and then p'raps you'll be
+'appy."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot 'ave I done now?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"You've made me ashamed of you," she stormed.
+"You've humiliated me before all those people. What
+must they think, seein' me married to one who will
+suffer unto the third and fourth generation and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You will and you know it," she cried. "Look
+at the men you 'ad 'ere to-night. You never been a
+proper 'usband to me. Here have I been toiling and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+moiling, inching and pinching, working my fingers
+to the bone for you, and then you treat me like this."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle began to edge almost imperceptibly towards
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"See how you've humiliated me," her voice began to
+quaver. "What will they say at the Chapel? They
+know all about you, whistling on Sundays and spending
+your time in public-houses, while your wife is working
+herself to skin an' bone to cook your meals and mend
+your clothes. What'll they say now they've seen the
+low companions you invite to your home? They'll
+see how you respect your wife."</p>
+
+<p>Still Bindle made no retort; but in a subdued murmur
+hummed "Gospel Bells," Mrs. Bindle's favourite
+hymn, which he used as a snake-charmer uses a
+flute.</p>
+
+<p>"You're glad, I know it," she continued, exasperated
+by his silence. "Glad to see your wife humiliated.
+Look at you now! You're glad." Her voice was
+rising hysterically. "One of these days I shall go out
+and never return, and then you'll be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Like a tornado the emotional super-storm burst, and
+Mrs. Bindle was in the grip of screaming hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, she cried, she exhorted, she reproached.
+Everything evil that had ever happened to her, or to the
+universe, was directly due to the blackness of Bindle's
+heart and the guiltiness of his conscience. He was
+the one barrier between her and earthly heaven. He
+had failed where Mr. Hearty had succeeded. She
+poured upon him a withering stream of invective,&mdash;and
+she did it at the top of her voice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At first Bindle stared; then he gazed vaguely about
+him. He made a sudden dive for the cupboard,
+rummaged about until he found the vinegar-bottle.
+Pouring some out into a saucer, he filled it up with
+water and returned to where Mrs. Bindle sat, slopping
+the liquid as he went.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was now engaged in linking him up
+with Sodom and Gomorrah, the fate that befell Lot's
+wife and Dr. Crippen. Then, with a final scream,
+she slipped from her chair to the floor, where she lay
+moaning and sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>With an earnest, anxious look in his eyes, Bindle
+knelt beside her and from the saucer proceeded to
+sprinkle her generously with vinegar and water, until
+in odour she resembled a freshly-made salad.</p>
+
+<p>When he had sprinkled the greater part of the contents
+of the saucer on to her person, he sat back on
+his heels and, with grave and anxious eyes, regarded
+her as a boy might who has lighted the end of a
+rocket and waits expectantly to see the result.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the storm of emotion died down and finally
+ceased. He still continued to gaze fixedly at Mrs.
+Bindle, convinced that vinegar-and-water was the one
+and only cure for hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, she straightened herself. She moved, then
+struggling up into a sitting position, she looked about
+her. The unaccustomed smell assailed her nostrils
+she sniffed sharply two or three times.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you been doing?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I been bringin' you to," he said, his forehead
+still ribbed with anxiety.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you beast, you!" she moaned, as she
+struggled to her feet. "You done it on purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"Done wot on purpose?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Poured vinegar all over me and soaked me to the
+skin. You've spoilt my dress. You&mdash;&mdash;" and with
+a characteristically sudden movement, she turned and
+fled from the room and upstairs, banging the door
+with a ferocity that shook the whole house.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "An' me
+thinkin' she'd like me to bring 'er round," and he
+slipped out into the parlour, which wore a very obvious
+morning-after-the-party aspect. His object was to
+give Mrs. Bindle an opportunity of returning. He
+knew her to be incapable of going to bed with her
+kitchen untidy.</p>
+
+<p>He ate a sausage-roll and a piece of the admonitory
+jam-tart, listening keenly for sounds of Mrs. Bindle
+descending the stairs. Finally he seated himself on
+the stamped-plush couch and absent-mindedly lighted
+his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he heard a soft tread upon the stairs, as
+if someone were endeavouring to descend without
+noise. He sighed his relief.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later he rose and stretched himself
+sleepily. There were obvious sounds of movement
+in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Now if I wasn't the bloomin' coward wot I am,"
+he remarked, as he took a final look round, "I'd light
+them two candles; but I ain't got the pluck."</p>
+
+<p>With that he turned out the gas and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You take those bottles into the scullery and be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+quick about it," was Mrs. Bindle's greeting as he
+entered the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>She fixed her eye on the platoon of empty beer-bottles
+that Bindle had assembled upon the dresser.</p>
+
+<p>He paused in the act of digging into his pipe with a
+match-stick. He had been prepared for the tail-end
+of a tornado, and this slight admonitory puff surprised
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! did you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>Without a word the pipe was slipped into his pocket,
+and picking up a brace of bottles in either hand he
+passed into the scullery.</p>
+
+<p>As he did so a strange glint sprang into Mrs. Bindle's
+eyes. With a panther-like movement she dashed
+across to the scullery door, slammed it to and turned
+the key. A second later the kitchen was in darkness,
+and Mrs. Bindle was on her way upstairs to bed.</p>
+
+<p>The continuous banging upon the scullery door as
+she proceeded leisurely to undress was as sweet music
+to her ears.</p>
+
+<p>That night Bindle slept indifferently well.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMING OF JOSEPH THE SECOND</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Why can't you drink your tea like a Christian?"
+Mrs. Bindle hurled the words
+at Bindle as if she hoped they would
+hit him.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her over the edge of the saucerful of
+tea, which he had previously cooled by blowing noisily
+upon it. A moment later he proceeded to empty the
+saucer with a sibilant sound suggestive of relish. He
+then replaced it upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Might as well be among pigs, the way you behave
+at table," she snapped and, as if to emphasise her
+own refinement in taking liquids, she lifted her cup
+delicately to her lips, the little finger of her right hand
+crooked at an awkward angle.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle leaned slightly towards her, his hand to his
+ear. Ignoring his attitude, she replaced the cup in
+the saucer.</p>
+
+<p>"You done that fine, Mrs. B. I didn't 'ear a sound,"
+and he grinned in that provocative manner which
+always fanned the flame of her anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity you don't learn yourself, instead of behaving
+as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"But 'ow am I to know 'ow a Christian drinks?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+he demanded, harking back to Mrs. Bindle's remark.
+"There's 'Earty now, 'e's a Christian; but he sucks
+in 'is whiskers as if 'e was 'ungry."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't talk to me," was the impatient
+response, as she proceeded to pour herself out another
+cup of tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Wotjer marry me for, then? I told you I was
+always chatty at breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting!" she cried angrily. He
+stared at her in genuine astonishment. "You know
+I never allowed you to say such things to me before
+we were married."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered as he pushed
+across his cup that it might be refilled.</p>
+
+<p>"Millie's coming this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Millie!" he cried, his face beaming. "She all
+right again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Disgustin'," he repeated vaguely. Then understanding
+came to him.</p>
+
+<p>Millie Dixon, née Hearty, had, some weeks previously,
+presented her husband with "a little Joe." These had
+been her first words to Charley Dixon when he, still
+partially in the grip of the terror through which he
+had passed, had been taken by the nurse to be introduced
+to his son and heir, whilst a pale, tired Millie
+smiled bravely up at him.</p>
+
+<p>To Mrs. Bindle the very mention of the word
+"babies" in mixed company was an offence. The
+news that he was an uncle had reached Bindle from
+Mrs. Hearty, Mr. Hearty sharing his sister-in-law's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+views upon reticence in such delicate and personal
+matters.</p>
+
+<p>"She goin' to bring it with 'er?" Bindle enquired
+eagerly; but Mrs. Bindle, anticipating such a question,
+had risen and, going over to the sink, had turned on
+the tap, allowing the question to pass in a rushing of
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"Funny feelin' like that about babies," he muttered
+as he rose from the table, his meal completed. "I
+suppose that's why she wouldn't let me keep rabbits."</p>
+
+<p>"Charley's coming in later; he's going to mend
+Aunt Anne's musical-box," was Mrs. Bindle's next
+announcement.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle whistled incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?"</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't goin' to trust 'im with Ole Dumb
+Abraham, are you?" he asked in a hushed voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And why not, pray?" she challenged. "Millie
+says Charley is very clever at mending things, and it's
+never played."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle said nothing. The musical-box had been
+left to Mrs. Bindle by "poor Aunt Anne"&mdash;Mrs.
+Bindle referred to all dead relatives as "poor"; it
+was her one unconscious blasphemy. Dumb Abraham,
+as Bindle called the relic, had always been the most
+sacred among Mrs. Bindle's household gods. It had
+arrived dumb, and dumb it had remained, as she would
+never hear of it leaving the house to be put in order.</p>
+
+<p>If Bindle ever went into the parlour after dark, he
+was always told to be careful of Aunt Anne's musical
+box. Many a battle had been waged over its dumb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+ugliness. Once he had rested for a moment upon its
+glassy surface a half-smoked cigar, a thoughtless act
+which had resulted in one of the stormiest passages of
+their married life.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" challenged Mrs. Bindle, as he remained
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say anythink," he mumbled, picking up
+his cap and making for the door, thankful that it was
+Saturday, and that he would be home in time to see
+his beloved niece.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Bindle arrived home with his pockets
+bulging, and several parcels of varying sizes under his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got there?" demanded Mrs.
+Bindle, who was occupied in spreading a white cloth
+upon the kitchen table.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! jest a few things for 'is Nibs," was the
+response.</p>
+
+<p>"For who?"</p>
+
+<p>"The nipper," he explained, as he proceeded to
+unburden himself of the parcels, laying them on the
+dresser.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd try and talk like a Christian," and
+she banged a metal tea-tray upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle ignored her remark. He was engaged in
+taking from its wrappings a peculiarly hideous rag-doll.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle paused in her preparations to watch the
+operation.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that for?" she demanded aggressively.</p>
+
+<p>"Millie's kid," he replied, devoting himself to the
+opening of other packages, and producing a monkey-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>on-a-stick,
+an inexpensive teddy-bear, a jack-in-the-box
+and several metal animals, which on being blown
+through emitted strident noises.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, wasting
+money on hideous things like that. They'd frighten
+the poor child to death."</p>
+
+<p>"Frighten 'im!" he cried. "These ain't goin' to
+frighten 'im. You wait an' 'ear wot 'e's got to say
+about 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"You just clear those things out of my kitchen,"
+was the uncompromising rejoinder. "I won't have
+the poor child sent into convulsions because you're
+a fool."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in her voice which caused
+Bindle meekly to gather together the toys and carry
+them out of the kitchen and upstairs, where he placed
+them in a drawer devoted entirely to his own possessions.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed," he murmured, as he laid them
+one beside another. "And me a-thinkin' they'd make
+'im laugh;" with that he closed the drawer, determined
+that, at least, Millie should see the toys that
+were as much a tribute to her as to her offspring.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy little Millikins 'avin' a kid all of 'er own,"
+he muttered, as he descended the stairs, "'er wot I used
+to dangle on my knee till she crowed again. Well,
+well," he added as he opened the kitchen door, "we
+ain't none of us gettin' younger."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's that?" enquired Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Merely a sort o' casual remark that none of us
+ain't puttin' back the clock."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle sniffed disdainfully, and busied herself
+with preparations for tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me before that Millikins was
+comin'?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you're never in as any other decent
+husband is."</p>
+
+<p>He recognised the portents and held his peace.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Bindle was busy, her temper had a
+tendency to be on what Bindle called "the short side,"
+and then even her favourite hymn, "Gospel Bells,"
+frequently failed to stem the tide of her wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't we goin' to 'ave tea in the parlour?" he
+enquired presently, as Mrs. Bindle smoothed the cloth
+over the kitchen table.</p>
+
+<p>"No, we're not," she snapped, thinking it unnecessary
+to add that Millie had particularly requested that
+she might have it "in your lovely kitchen," because
+she was "one of the family."</p>
+
+<p>Although Bindle infinitely preferred the kitchen to
+that labyrinth of furniture and knick-knacks known
+as the parlour, he felt that the occasion demanded the
+discomfort consequent upon ceremony. He was, however,
+too wise to criticise the arrangement; for Mrs.
+Bindle's temper and tongue were of a known sharpness
+that counselled moderation.</p>
+
+<p>She had made no mention of the time of Millie's
+arrival, and Bindle decided not to take the risk of
+enquiring. He contented himself with hovering about,
+getting under Mrs. Bindle's feet, as she expressed it,
+and managing to place himself invariably in the exact
+spot she was making for.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If he sat on a chair, Mrs. Bindle seemed suddenly
+to discover that it required dusting. If he took refuge
+in a corner, Mrs. Bindle promptly dived into it with
+an "Oh! get out of my way, do," and he would do a
+swift side-step, only to make for what was the high-road
+of her next strategic move.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go out like you always do?" she
+demanded at one point.</p>
+
+<p>"Because Millikins is comin'," he replied simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you can stay at home for&mdash;when somebody's
+coming," she amended, "but other days you leave me
+alone for weeks together."</p>
+
+<p>"But when I do stay at 'ome you 'ustles me about
+like a stray goat," he complained, only just succeeding
+in avoiding a sudden dash on Mrs. Bindle's part.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, go on. Blame everything on to me,"
+she cried, as she made a swift dive for the stove, and
+proceeded to poke the fire as if determined to break
+the fire-brick at the back. "If you'd only been a
+proper 'usband to me I might have been different."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle slipped across the kitchen and stepped out
+into the passage. Here he remained until Mrs. Bindle
+suddenly threw open the kitchen door.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you standing there for?" she demanded
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"So as not to get in the way," was the meek reply.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to be able to tell Millie that you were
+turned out of the kitchen," she stormed. "I know
+you and your mean, deceitful ways. Well, stay there
+if you like it!" and she banged the door, and Bindle
+heard the key turn in the lock.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's one thing about Mrs. B.," he remarked, as
+he leaned against the wall, "she ain't dull."</p>
+
+<p>When at length the expected knock came, it was Mrs.
+Bindle who darted out and opened the door to admit
+Millie Dixon, carrying in her arms the upper end of
+what looked like a cascade of white lace.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden fit of shyness seized Bindle, and he
+retreated to the kitchen; whilst aunt and niece greeted
+one another in the passage.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Uncle Joe?" he heard Millie ask presently.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm 'ere, Millikins," he called-out, "cookin' the
+veal for that there young prodigal."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Millie, flushed and happy, fluttered
+into the room, still holding the cascade of lace.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling Uncle Joe," she cried, advancing towards
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He took a step backwards, a look of awe in his eyes,
+which were fixed upon the top of the cascade.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to kiss me, Uncle Joe?" she asked,
+holding up her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss you, my dear, why&mdash;&mdash;" Bindle was seized
+with a sudden huskiness in his voice, as he leaned
+forward gingerly and kissed the warm red lips held out
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that It?" he asked, looking down with troubled
+eyes at Millie's burden.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Little Joe," she said softly, the wonder-light
+of motherhood in her eyes, as she placed one foot
+on the rail of a chair to support her precious burden,
+thus releasing her right hand to lift the veil from a red<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+and puckered face, out of which gazed a pair of filmy
+blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ooooooosssss." Instinctively Bindle drew a deep
+breath as he bent a few inches forward.</p>
+
+<p>For fully a minute he stood absorbing all there was
+to be seen of Joseph the Second.</p>
+
+<p>"'E ain't very big, is 'e?" he enquired, raising his
+eyes to Millie's.</p>
+
+<p>"He's only six weeks old," snapped Mrs. Bindle, who
+had followed Millie into the kitchen and now stood,
+with ill-concealed impatience, whilst Bindle was
+gazing at the infant. "What did you expect?" she
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't 'e look 'ot?" said Bindle at length, his forehead
+seamed with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Hot, Uncle Joe?" enquired Millie, unable to keep
+from her voice a tinge of the displeasure of a mother
+who hears her offspring criticised.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean 'e don't look strong," he added hastily,
+conscious that he had said the wrong thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly, Uncle Joe, he's just a wee little baby,
+aren't you, bootiful boy?" and she gazed at the red
+face in a way that caused Bindle to realise that his
+niece was now a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's the very spit of 'is old uncle, ain't 'e?" and
+he turned to Mrs. Bindle for corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>She ignored the remark; but Millie smiled sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"I 'ad a takin' way with me when I was a little
+'un," continued Bindle reminiscently. "Why, once I
+was nearly kissed by a real lady&mdash;one with a title, too."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! do tell me, Uncle Joe," cried Millie, looking
+at him with that odd little lift of the brows, which
+always made Charley want to kiss her. She had heard
+the story a score of times before.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, 'er 'usband was a-tryin' to get into Parliament,
+an' 'is wife, wot was the lady, came round a-askin'
+people to vote for 'im. Seein' me in my mother's arms,
+she says, 'Wot a pretty child.' You see, Millikins,
+looks was always my strong point," and he paused in
+the narrative to grin.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she bends down to kiss me," he continued,
+"an' jest at that moment wot must I go and do but
+sneeze, an' that's 'ow I missed a kiss an' 'er
+'usband a vote."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Uncle Joe," laughed Millie, making a little
+motion with her arms towards Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word, Mrs. Bindle took the precious bundle
+of lace, out of which two filmy eyes gazed vacantly.
+With a swaying movement she began to croon a
+meaningless tune, that every now and then seemed as
+if it might develop into "Gospel Bells"; yet always
+hesitated on the brink and became diverted into something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>The baby turned on her a solemn, appraising look
+of interrogation, then, apparently approving of the
+tune, settled down comfortably to enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle regarded Mrs. Bindle with wonder. Into her
+eyes had crept a something he had only once seen
+there before, and that was on the occasion he had
+brought Millie to Fenton Street when she left home.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that "Baby" was content, Millie dropped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+into a chair with a tired little sigh, her eyes fixed upon
+the precious bundle of lace containing what would one
+day be a man.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle continued to sway and croon in a way
+that seemed to Little Joe's entire satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you glad we called him after you, Uncle
+Joe?" said Millie, tearing her eyes with difficulty from
+the bundle and turning them upon Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer aunt told me," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I do hope he'll grow up like you, Uncle Joe,
+dear Uncle Joe," she cried, clasping her hands in her
+earnestness, as if that might help to make good her
+wish.</p>
+
+<p>"Like me?" There was wonder and incredulity
+in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley says he <i>must</i> grow up like you, darling
+Uncle Joe. You see&mdash;&mdash;" She broke off as Bindle
+suddenly turned and, without a word, made for the
+door. A moment later it banged-to behind him
+arousing Mrs. Bindle from her pre-occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your Uncle gone?" she enquired, lifting
+her eyes from their absorbed contemplation of the
+flaming features of her nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"He's&mdash;he's gone to fetch something," lied Millie.
+Instinctively she felt that this was an occasion that
+called for anything but the truth. She had seen the
+unusual brightness of Bindle's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>From the passage he was heard vigorously blowing
+his nose.</p>
+
+<p>"It's them toys he's after," said Mrs. Bindle, with
+scornful conviction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Toys?" Millie looked up enquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"He bought a lot of hideous things for this little
+precious," and her eyes fell upon the bundle in her arms,
+her lips breaking into a curve that Bindle had never
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Millie," she continued, "he doesn't know.
+We've neither chick nor child of&mdash;&mdash;" She broke off
+suddenly, and bowed her head low over the baby.</p>
+
+<p>In a second Millie was on her feet, her arm round
+Mrs. Bindle's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Aunt Lizzie!" she cried, her voice a little
+unsteady. "Darling Aunt Lizzie. I&mdash;I know&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point Joseph the Second, objecting to the
+pressure to which he was being subjected between the
+two emotional bosoms, raised his voice in protest, just
+as Bindle entered, his arms full of the toys he had
+bought.</p>
+
+<p>He stood in the doorway, gaping with amazement.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Bindle caught sight of him, she blinked
+rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bring that rubbish in here," she cried with
+a return to her normal manner. "You'll frighten the
+child out of its life."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Uncle Joe," cried Millie, as Bindle deposited
+the toys on the table. "I think you're the darlingest
+uncle in all the world."</p>
+
+<p>There were tears in the eyes she turned on him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle swung her back on the pair, as Bindle
+proceeded to explain the virtues and mechanism of
+his purchases. She was convinced that such monstrosities
+would produce in little Joseph nothing less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+than convulsions, probably resulting in permanent
+injury to his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst they were thus engaged, Mrs. Bindle walked
+up and down the kitchen, absorbed in the baby.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie Lizzie," cried Millie presently, "please
+bring Little Joe here."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle hesitated. "They'll frighten him,
+Millie," she said, with a gentleness in her voice that
+caused Bindle to look quickly up at her.</p>
+
+<p>To disprove the statement, and with all the assurance
+of a young mother, Millie seized the rag-doll and a
+diminutive golliwog, and held them over the recumbent
+form of Joseph the Second.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant a pudgy little hand was thrust up,
+followed immediately after by another, and Joseph
+the Second demonstrated with all his fragile might
+that, as far as toys were concerned, he was at one with
+his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle beamed with delight. Seizing the monkey-on-a-stick
+he proceeded vigorously to work it up
+and down. The pudgy hands raised themselves
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! let Uncle Joe hold him," cried Millie, in
+ecstasy at the sight of the dawning intelligence on the
+baby's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Me!" cried Bindle in horror, stepping back as if
+he had been asked to foster-mother a vigorous young
+rattlesnake. "Me 'old It?" He looked uncertainly
+at Mrs. Bindle and then again at Millie. "Not for an
+old-age pension."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll make him cry," said Mrs. Bindle with con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>viction,
+hugging Little Joe closer and increasing the
+swaying movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you must!" cried Millie gaily. "I'll take
+him, Auntie Lizzie," she said, turning to Mrs. Bindle,
+who manifested reluctance to relinquish the bundle.</p>
+
+<p>"I might 'urt 'im," protested Bindle, retreating a
+step further, his forehead lined with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Uncle Joe," commanded Millie, extending the
+bundle, "put your arms out."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle extended his hands as might a child who is
+expecting to be caned. There was reluctance in the
+movement, and a suggestion that at any moment he
+was prepared to withdraw them suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that way," snapped Mrs. Bindle, with all the
+scorn of a woman's superior knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Millie settled the matter by thrusting the bundle
+into Bindle's arms and he had, perforce, to clasp it.</p>
+
+<p>He looked about him wildly, then, his eyes happening
+to catch those of Joseph the Second, he forgot his
+responsibilities, and began winking rapidly and in a
+manner that seemed entirely to Little Joe's satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Auntie Lizzie, look," cried Millie. "Little
+Joe loves Uncle Joe already." The inspiration of
+motherhood had enabled her to interpret a certain
+slobbering movement about Little Joe's lips as affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look!" she cried again, as one chubby little
+hand was raised as if in salutation. "Auntie
+Lizzie&mdash;&mdash;" She suddenly broke off. She had caught
+sight of the tense look on Mrs. Bindle's face as she
+gazed at the baby, and the hunger in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word she seized the bundle from Bindle's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+arms and placed it in those of her aunt, which instinctively
+curved themselves to receive the precious
+burden.</p>
+
+<p>"There, darling Joeykins," she crooned as she bent
+over her baby's face, as if to shield from Mrs. Bindle
+any momentary disappointment it might manifest.
+"Go to Auntie Lizzie."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, wot 'ave I&mdash;&mdash;?" began Bindle, when he
+was interrupted by a knock at the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Charley," cried Millie, dancing towards the
+door in a most unmatronly manner. "Come along,
+Uncle Joe, he's going to mend the musical-box," and
+with that she tripped down the passage, had opened
+the door and was greeting her husband almost before
+Bindle had left the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in here," she cried, opening the parlour
+door, and hardly giving Bindle time to greet Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere," cried Bindle, "why&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Uncle Joe, Charley's going to mend
+the musical-box."</p>
+
+<p>"But wot about it&mdash;'im," Bindle corrected himself,
+indicating the kitchen with a jerk of his thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley's-going-to-mend-the-musical-box," she repeated
+with great distinctness. And again Bindle
+marvelled at the grown-upness of her.</p>
+
+<p>He looked across at his nephew, a puzzled expression
+creasing his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Better do as she says, Uncle Joe," laughed Charley.
+"It saves time."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" began Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is, Charley," cried Millie, indicating a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+mahogany object, with glass top and sides that gave an
+indelicate view of its internal organism. Being a
+dutiful husband, Charley lifted down the box and
+placed it on to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"For Gawd's sake be careful of Ole Dumb Abraham,"
+cried Bindle. "If&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of who?" cried Millie, her pretty brows puckered.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle explained, watching with anxious eyes as
+Charley lifted the treasure from the small table on
+which it habitually rested, and placed it upon the
+centre table, where Millie had cleared a space.</p>
+
+<p>Charley's apparent unconcern gave Bindle an
+unpleasant feeling at the base of his spine. He had
+been disciplined to regard the parlour as holy ground,
+and the musical-box as the holiest thing it contained.</p>
+
+<p>For the next three-quarters of an hour Bindle and
+Millie watched Charley, as, with deft fingers, he took
+the affair to pieces and put it together again.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, with much coaxing and a little oil, he got it
+to give forth an anæmic interpretation of "The Keel
+Row." Then it gurgled, slowed down and gave up the
+struggle, in consequence of which Charley made further
+incursions into its interior.</p>
+
+<p>Becoming accustomed to the thought of Aunt
+Anne's legacy being subjected to the profanation of
+screw-driver and oil-bottle, Bindle sat down by the
+window, and proceeded to exchange confidences with
+Millie, who had made it clear to him that her aunt and
+son were to be left to their tête-à-tête undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation between uncle and niece was
+punctuated by snatches from "The Keel Row," as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+Charley was successful in getting the sluggish mechanism
+of Dumb Abraham into temporary motion.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally he would give expression to a hiss or
+murmur of impatience, and Millie would smile across
+at him an intimate little smile of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, gaunt tragedy stalked into the room.</p>
+
+<p>Crash!</p>
+
+<p>"My Gawd!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Charley!"</p>
+
+<p>"Damn!"</p>
+
+<p>And Poor Aunt Anne's musical-box lay on the floor,
+a ruin of splintered glass.</p>
+
+<p>Charley Dixon sucked a damaged thumb, Millie
+clung to his arm, solicitous and enquiring, whilst
+Bindle gazed down at the broken mass, fear in his eyes,
+and a sense of irretrievable disaster clutching at his
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Charley began to explain, Millie demanded to see
+the damaged thumb&mdash;but Bindle continued to gaze at
+the sacred relic.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later, the trio left the parlour. As
+noiselessly as conspirators they tip-toed along the
+passage to the kitchen door, which stood ajar.</p>
+
+<p>Through the aperture Mrs. Bindle could be seen
+seated at the table, Joseph the Second reposing in the
+crook of her left arm, whilst she, with her right hand,
+was endeavouring to work the monkey-on-a-stick.</p>
+
+<p>In her eyes was a strange softness, a smile broke the
+hard lines of her mouth, whilst from her lips came an
+incessant flow of baby language.</p>
+
+<p>For several minutes they watched. They saw Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+Bindle lay aside the monkey-on-a-stick, and bend over
+the babe, murmuring the sounds that come by instinct
+to every woman's lips.</p>
+
+<p>At a sign from Millie, they entered. Mrs. Bindle
+glanced over her shoulder in their direction; but other
+and weightier matters claimed her attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Lizzie," began Bindle, who had stipulated that he
+should break the awful news, urging as his reason that
+it had to be done with "tack." He paused. Mrs.
+Bindle took no notice; but continued to bend over
+Little Joe, making strange sounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Lizzie&mdash;&mdash;" he began, paused, then in a rush the
+words came. "We broken the musical-box."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, that the heavens might have an opportunity
+of falling.</p>
+
+<p>"Did-he-love-his-Auntie-Lizzie-blossom-um-um-um-um."</p>
+
+<p>Charley and Millie exchanged glances; but Bindle
+was too intent upon his disastrous mission to be
+conscious of anything but the storm he knew was about
+to break.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you 'ear, Lizzie," he continued. "We broken
+the musical-box. Smashed it all to smithereens.
+Done for it," he added, as if to leave no loophole for
+misconception as to the appalling nature of the tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>He held his breath, as one who has just tugged at
+the cord of a shower-bath.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! go away do!" she cried. "Um-um-um-um-prettyums."</p>
+
+<p>"Pore Aunt Anne's musical-box," he repeated dully.
+"It's smashed."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bother the musical-box! Um-um-um-per-weshus-um-um-um."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle had not even looked up.</p>
+
+<p>It was Millie who shepherded the others back into
+the parlour, where Bindle mopped his brow, with the
+air of a man who, having met death face to face, has
+survived.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" was all he said.</p>
+
+<p>And Millie smiled across at Charley, a smile of
+superior understanding.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE</h3>
+
+
+<p>"I wonder you allow that girl to wear such
+disgusting clothes."</p>
+
+<p>For the last five minutes Mrs. Bindle had
+been watching Alice, Mrs. Hearty's maid, as she
+moved about the room, tidying-up. The girl had
+just returned from her evening out, and her first act
+had been to bring Mrs. Hearty her nightly glass of
+Guinness and "snack of bread-and-cheese," an enormous
+crust torn from a new cottage loaf and plentifully
+spread with butter, flanked by about a quarter-of-a-pound
+of cheese. Now that the girl had left
+the room, Mrs. Bindle could contain herself no longer.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty was a woman upon whom fat had
+descended as a disguise. Her manifold chins rippled
+downwards until they became absorbed in the gigantic
+wave of her bust. She had a generous appetite,
+and was damned with a liking for fat-forming foods.</p>
+
+<p>With her sister she had nothing in common; but
+in Bindle she had found a kindred spirit. The very
+sight of him would invariably set her heaving and
+pulsating with laughter and protestations of "Oh,
+Joe, don't!"</p>
+
+<p>For response to her sister's comment, Mrs. Hearty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+took a deep draught of Guinness and then, with a
+film of froth still upon her upper lip, she retorted,
+"It's 'er night out," and relapsed into wheezes and
+endeavours to regain her breath.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was not in a good humour. She had
+called hoping to find Mr. Hearty returned from choir-practice,
+after which was to be announced the deacons'
+decision as to who was to succeed Mr. Smithers in
+training the choir.</p>
+
+<p>Her brother-in-law's success was with her something
+between an inspiration and a hobby. It became
+the absorbing interest in life, outside the chapel and
+her home. No wife, or mother, ever watched the
+progress of a husband, or son, with keener interest,
+or greater admiration, than Mrs. Bindle that of Mr.
+Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>As a girl, she had been pleasure-loving. There were
+those who even went to the extent of regarding her
+as flighty. She attended theatres and music-halls,
+which she had not then regarded as "places of sin,"
+and her contemporaries classified her as something
+of a flirt; but disillusionment had come with marriage.
+She soon realised that she had made the great and
+unforgivable mistake of marrying the wrong man.
+It turned her from the "carnal," and was the cause
+of her joining the Alton Road Chapel, at which Mr.
+Hearty worshipped.</p>
+
+<p>From that date she began a careful and elaborate
+preparation for the next world.</p>
+
+<p>Although she nightly sought the Almighty to forgive
+her her trespasses, volunteering the information<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+that she in turn would forgive those who trespassed
+against her, she never forgave Bindle for his glib
+and ready tongue, which had obscured her judgment
+to the extent of allowing to escape from the matrimonial
+noose, a potential master-greengrocer with
+three shops.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in her attitude towards Mr.
+Hearty suggestive of sentiment. She was a woman,
+and she bowed the knee at an altar where women
+love to worship.</p>
+
+<p>"I call it&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Bindle stopped short as Alice
+re-entered the room with a small dish of pickled
+onions, without which Mrs. Hearty would have found
+it impossible to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>With a woman's instinct, Alice realised that Mrs.
+Bindle disapproved of her low-cut, pale blue blouse,
+and the short skirt that exposed to the world's gaze
+so much of the nether Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't been lonely, mum?" she queried
+solicitously, as she took a final look round before
+going to bed, to see that everything was in order.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty shook her head and undulated violently.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my breath," she panted, and proceeded to
+hit her chest with the flat of her doubled-up fist.
+"'Ad a nice time?" she managed to gasp in the tone
+of a mistress who knows and understands, and is
+known and understood by, her maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it was lovely," cried Alice ecstatically. "I
+went to the pictures with"&mdash;she hesitated and blushed&mdash;"a
+friend," then, pride getting the better of self-consciousness,
+she added, "a gentleman friend, mum.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+There was a filum about a young girl running away
+with 'er boy on a horse who turned out to be a millionaire
+and she looked lovely in her veil and orange-blossom
+and 'im that 'andsome."</p>
+
+<p>"And when's it to be, Alice?" enquired Mrs.
+Hearty, between the assaults upon her chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mum!" giggled Alice, and a moment later
+she had disappeared round the door, with a "Good
+night, mum, mind you sleeps well."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm surprised the way you let that girl talk to
+you, Martha," snapped Mrs. Bindle, almost before the
+door had closed behind the retreating Alice. "You
+allow her to be too familiar. If you give them an
+inch, they'll take an ell," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a good gal," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she
+lifted the glass of Guinness to her lips. "It's gone
+orf," she added a moment later. "It ain't wot it
+used to be," and she shook a despondent head as she
+replaced the almost empty glass upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be better without it," was the unsympathetic
+rejoinder, then, not to be diverted from the
+topic of Alice and her scanty attire, Mrs. Bindle added,
+"Her blouse was disgusting, and as for her skirt,
+I should be ashamed for her to be seen entering my
+house."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle believed in appearances as she believed
+in "the Lord," and it is open to question, if the two
+had at any time clashed, whether appearances would
+have been sacrificed.</p>
+
+<p>"She's all right," wheezed Mrs. Hearty comfortably,
+through a mouthful of bread-and-cheese.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The way girls dress now makes me hot all over,"
+snapped Mrs. Bindle. "The police ought to stop
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"They,"&mdash;with a gigantic swallow Mrs. Hearty
+reduced the bread-and-cheese to conversational
+proportions,&mdash;"they like it," she gasped at length,
+and broke into ripples and wheezes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting, Martha. You make me
+ashamed. You ought to speak to Alice. It's not
+respectable, her going about like that."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty made an effort to speak; but the
+words failed to penetrate the barrage of bread-and-cheese&mdash;Mrs.
+Hearty did everything with gusto.</p>
+
+<p>"Supposing I was to go out in a short skirt like
+that. What would you say then?"</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you ain't got the legs, Lizzie," and Mrs.
+Hearty was off into a paroxysm of gasps and undulations.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh don't, don't," she gasped, as if Mrs. Bindle
+were responsible for her agony. "You'll be the
+death of me," she cried, as she wiped her eyes with a
+soiled pocket-handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>To Mrs. Hearty, laughter came as an impulse and
+an agony. She would implore the world at large not
+to make her laugh, heaving and shaking as she protested.
+She was good-natured, easy-going, and
+popular with her friends, who marvelled at what it
+was she had seen in the sedate and decorous Mr.
+Hearty to prompt her to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>During her sister's paroxysm, Mrs. Bindle preserved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+a dignified silence. She always deplored Mrs. Hearty's
+lack of self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"There are the neighbours to consider," she continued
+at length. Mrs. Bindle's thoughts were always
+with her brother-in-law. "Look how low her blouse
+was."</p>
+
+<p>"It's 'ealthy," puffed Mrs. Hearty, who could
+always be depended upon to find excuses for a black
+sheep's blackness.</p>
+
+<p>"I call it disgusting." Mrs. Bindle's mouth shut
+with a snap.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Hearty's reply was stifled in
+a sudden fit of coughing. She heaved and struggled
+for breath, while her face took on a deep purple hue.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle rose and proceeded to bestow a series
+of resounding smacks with the flat of her hand upon
+Mrs. Hearty's ample back. There was a heartiness in
+the blows that savoured of the Old rather than the New
+Testament.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly five minutes elapsed before Mrs. Hearty
+was sufficiently recovered to explain that a crumb had
+gone the wrong way.</p>
+
+<p>"Serves you right for encouraging that girl in her
+wickedness," was Mrs. Bindle's unsympathetic comment
+as she returned to her chair. Vaguely she saw in
+her sister's paroxysm, the rebuke of a frowning Providence.</p>
+
+<p>"You wasn't always like wot you are now,"
+complained Mrs. Hearty at length.</p>
+
+<p>"I never dressed anything like that girl." There
+was a note of fierceness in Mrs. Bindle's voice,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+"and I defy you to say I did, Martha Hearty, so
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I 'ave to speak to you once about your
+stockings?" Mrs. Hearty's recent attack seemed to
+have rendered speech easier.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder you choke," snapped Mrs. Bindle
+angrily, "saying things like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't the boys shout after you 'yaller legs'?"
+she gasped, determined to get the full flavour out of
+the incident. "They wasn't worn coloured then."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder you aren't afraid of being struck dead,"
+cried Mrs. Bindle furiously.</p>
+
+<p>"And you goin' out in muslin and a thin petticoat,
+and yer legs showin' through and the lace on&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you dare&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Bindle stopped, her
+utterance strangled. Her face was scarlet, and in
+her eyes was murder. She was conscious that her
+past was a past of vanity; but those were days she
+had put behind her, days when she would spend
+every penny she could scrape together upon her
+person.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Hearty was oblivious to the storm of
+anger that her words had aroused in her sister's heart.
+The recollection of the yellow stockings and the
+transparent muslin frock was too much for her, and
+she was off into splutters and wheezes of mirth, among
+which an occasional "Oh don't!" was distinguishable.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what's coming to girls, I'm sure,"
+cried Mrs. Bindle at length. She had to some extent
+regained her composure, and was desirous of turning
+the conversation from herself. She lived in fear of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+her sister's frankness; Mrs. Hearty never censored a
+wardrobe before speaking of it.</p>
+
+<p>"They're a lot of brazen hussies," continued Mrs.
+Bindle, "displaying themselves like they do. I can't
+think why they do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Men!" grunted Mrs. Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting, Martha."</p>
+
+<p>"You always was a fool, Lizzie," said Mrs. Hearty
+good-humouredly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was determined not to allow the subject
+of Alice's indelicate display of her person to escape
+her. She had merely been waiting her opportunity
+to return to the charge.</p>
+
+<p>"You should think of Mr. Hearty," she said
+unctuously; "he's got a position to keep up, and
+people will talk, seeing that girl going out like that."</p>
+
+<p>At this, Mrs. Hearty once more became helpless
+with suppressed laughter. Her manifold chins
+vibrated, tears streamed down her cheeks, and she
+wheezed and gasped and struck her chest, fierce,
+resounding blows.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my God!" she gasped at length. "You'll
+be the death of me, Lizzie," and then another wave
+of laughter assailed her, and she was off again.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, as the result of an obvious effort, she
+spluttered, "'E likes it, too," she ended in a little
+scream of laughter. "You watch him. Oh, oh, I
+shall die!" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,"
+she cried angrily. "You're as bad as Bindle."</p>
+
+<p>For fully a minute, Mrs. Hearty rocked and heaved,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+as she strove to find utterance for something that
+seemed to be stifling her.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know Alf!" she gasped at length, as she
+mopped her face with the dingy pocket-handkerchief.
+"Alice gives notice," she managed to gasp. "Alf
+tries to kiss&mdash;&mdash;" and speech once more forsook
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The look in Mrs. Bindle's eyes was that she usually
+kept for blasphemers. Mr. Hearty was the god of
+her idolatry, impeccable, austere and unimpeachable.
+The mere suggestion that he should behave in a way
+she would not expect even Bindle to behave, filled her
+with loathing, and she determined that her sister
+would eventually share the fate of Sapphira.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha, you're a disgrace," she cried, rising.
+"You might at least have the decency not to drag
+Mr. Hearty's name into your unclean conversation.
+I think you owe him an apology for&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the door opened, and Mr. Hearty
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you, Alf?" demanded Mrs. Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I what, Martha?" asked Mr. Hearty in a
+thin, woolly voice. "Good evening, Elizabeth," he
+added, turning to Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you try to kiss Alice, and she slapped
+your face?" Mrs. Hearty once more proceeded to
+mop her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. The
+comedy was good; but it was painful.</p>
+
+<p>For one fleeting moment Mr. Hearty was unmasked.
+His whole expression underwent a change. There was
+fear in his eyes. He looked about him like a hunted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+animal seeking escape. Then, by a great effort, he
+seemed to re-assert control over himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I've forgotten to post a letter," he muttered,
+and a second later the door closed behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's always like that when I remind him," cried
+Mrs. Hearty, "always forgotten to post a letter."</p>
+
+<p>"Martha," said Mrs. Bindle solemnly, as she resumed
+her seat, "you're a wicked woman, and to-night I
+shall ask God to forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>"Make it Alf instead," cried Mrs. Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later, Mr. Hearty re-entered the
+parlour, looking furtively from his wife to Mrs. Bindle.
+He was a spare man of medium height, with an iron-grey
+moustache and what Bindle described as
+"'alleluia whiskers"; but which the world knows as
+mutton-chops. He was a man to whom all violence,
+be it physical or verbal, was distasteful. He preferred
+diplomacy to the sword.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo's got it, Alf?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, suddenly
+remembering the chapel choir and her husband's
+aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Coplestone." The natural woolliness of Mr.
+Hearty's voice was emphasised by the dejection of
+disappointment; but his eyes told of the relief he
+felt that Alice was no longer to be the topic of conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a shame, Mr. Hearty, that it is."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle folded her hands in her lap and drew
+in her chin, with the air of one who scents a great
+injustice. The injustice of the appointment quite
+blotted-out from her mind all thought of Alice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You got quite enough to do, Alf," wheezed Mrs.
+Hearty as, after many ineffectual bounces, she struggled
+to her feet, and stood swaying slightly as she beat her
+breast reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I could have found time," said Mr. Hearty, as
+he picked nervously at the quicks of his finger-nails.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you could," agreed Mrs. Bindle, looking
+up at her sister disapprovingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never once missed a choir-practice," he
+continued, with the air of a man who is advancing a
+definite claim.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust you," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she rolled
+towards the door. "It's them gals," she added.
+"Good-night, Lizzie. Don't be long, Alf. You always
+wake me getting into bed," and, with a final wheeze,
+she passed out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty coughed nervously behind his hand;
+whilst Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips and chin still
+further. The indelicacy of Mrs. Hearty's remark
+embarrassed them both.</p>
+
+<p>It had always been Mr. Hearty's wish to train the
+choir at the Alton Road Chapel, and when Mr.
+Smithers had resigned, owing to chronic bronchitis
+and the approach of winter, Mr. Hearty felt that the
+time had come when yet another of his ambitions was
+to be realised. There had proved, however, to be
+another Richmond in the field, in the shape of Mr.
+Coplestone, who kept an oil-shop in the New King's
+Road.</p>
+
+<p>By some means unknown to Mr. Hearty, his rival
+had managed to invest the interest of the minister<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+and several of the deacons, with the result that Mr.
+Hearty had come out a very bad second.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the hour of defeat, he yearned for sympathy,
+and there was only one to whom he could turn, his
+sister-in-law, who shared so many of his earthly
+views and heavenly hopes. Would his sister-in-law
+believe&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I call it a shame," she said for the second time, as
+Mr. Hearty drew a deep sigh of relief. In spite of
+herself, Mrs. Bindle was irritated at the way in which
+he picked at the quicks of his finger-nails, "and you
+so musical, too," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always been interested in music," said Mr.
+Hearty, with the air of one who knows that he is
+receiving nothing but his due. Alice and her alluring
+clothing were forgotten. "I had learned the Tonic
+Sol-fa notation by heart before I was twenty," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"You would have done so much to improve the
+singing." Mrs. Bindle was intent only on applying balm
+to her hero's wounds. She too had forgotten Alice
+and all her ways.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't what it might be," he remarked. "It
+has been very indifferent lately. Several have noticed
+it. Last Sunday, they nearly broke down in 'The
+Half Was Never Told.'"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"They always find it difficult to get high 'f'," he
+continued. "I should have made a point of cultivating
+their upper registers," he added, with the melancholy
+retrospection of a man who, after a fire, states that it
+had been his intention to insure on the morrow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;&mdash;" began Mrs. Bindle, then she stopped.
+It seemed unchristian to say that perhaps Mr. Coplestone
+would have to relinquish his newly acquired honour.</p>
+
+<p>"I should also have tried to have the American
+organ tuned, I don't think the bellows is very sound,
+either."</p>
+
+<p>For some minutes there was silence. Mr. Hearty was
+preoccupied with the quicks of his finger-nails. He
+had just succeeded in drawing blood, and he glanced
+covertly at Mrs. Bindle to see if she had noticed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;&mdash;" he paused. He had been seeking an
+opportunity of clearing his character with his sister-in-law.
+Suddenly inspiration gripped him.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;we&mdash;&mdash;" he paused. "I'm afraid Martha will
+have to get rid of Alice."</p>
+
+<p>"And about time, with clothes like she wears," was
+Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising comment.</p>
+
+<p>"And she tells&mdash;she's most untruthful," he continued
+eagerly; he was smarting under the recollection
+that Alice had on one occasion pushed aside the half-crown
+he had tendered, and it had required a ten
+shilling note to remove from her memory the thought
+of her "friend" with whom she had threatened
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been speaking about her to Martha this evening."
+The line of Mrs. Bindle's lips was still grim.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid she's a bad&mdash;not a good girl," amended
+Mr. Hearty. "I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't push yourself forward enough," said
+Mrs. Bindle, her thoughts still on Mr. Coplestone's
+victory. "Look at Bindle. He knows a lord, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+look what he is." She precipitated into the last two
+words all the venom of years of disappointment.
+"And you've got three shops," she added inconsequently.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I never had time to go out and about," stuttered
+Mr. Hearty, as if that explained the fact of his not
+possessing a lord among his acquaintance. His thoughts
+were still preoccupied with the Alice episode.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to, Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle with
+conviction. "You owe it to yourself and to what
+you've done."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Joseph is different," said Mr. Hearty,
+pursuing his own line of thought. "He&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Talks too much," said Mrs. Bindle with decision,
+filling in the blank inaccurately. "I tell him his fine
+friends only laugh up their sleeves at him. They
+should see him in his own home," she added.</p>
+
+<p>For some moments there was silence, during which
+Mrs. Bindle sat, immobile as an Assyrian goddess, her
+eyes smouldering balefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have liked to have trained the choir,"
+he said, his mind returning to the cause of his disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"It's that Mr. Coplestone," said Mrs. Bindle with
+conviction. "I never liked him, with his foxy little
+ways. I never deal with him."</p>
+
+<p>"I have always done what I could for the chapel,
+too," continued Mr. Hearty, not to be diverted from
+his main theme by reference to Mr. Coplestone's
+shortcomings.</p>
+
+<p>"You've done too much, Mr. Hearty, that's what's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+the matter," she cried with conviction, loyalty to her
+brother-in-law triumphing over all sense of Christian
+charity. "It's always the same. Look at Bindle,"
+she added, unable to forget entirely her own domestic
+cross. "Think what I've done for him, and look at
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Last year I let them have all the fruit at cost price
+for the choir-outing," said Mr. Hearty; "but I'll
+never do it again," he added, the man in him triumphing
+over the martyr, "and I picked it all out myself."</p>
+
+<p>"The more you do, the more you may do," said
+Mrs. Bindle oracularly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty's reference was to a custom prevailing
+among the worshippers at the Alton Road Chapel.
+It was an understood thing that, in placing orders,
+preference should always be given to members of
+the flock, who, on their part, undertook to supply their
+respective commodities at cost price. The object of
+this was to bring all festivities "within reach of our
+poorer brethren," as Mr. Sopley, a one-time minister,
+had expressed it when advocating the principle.</p>
+
+<p>The result was hours of heart-searching for those
+entrusted with the feeding of the Faithful. Mr. Hearty,
+for instance, spent much time and thought in wrestling
+with figures and his conscience. He argued that
+"cost price" must allow for rent, rates and taxes;
+salaries, a knowledge of the cheapest markets (which
+he possessed) and interest on capital (his own).</p>
+
+<p>By a curious coincidence, the actual figures came out
+very little above the ordinary retail price he was charging
+in his shops, which proved to him conclusively<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+that he was in no sense of the term a profiteer. As
+a matter of fact, it showed that he was under-charging.</p>
+
+<p>Other members of the chapel seemed to arrive at
+practically the same result as Mr. Hearty, and by similar
+means.</p>
+
+<p>As the "poorer brethren" had no voice in the fixing
+of these prices, and as everyone was too interested
+in his own figures to think of criticising those of others,
+the "poorer brethren" either paid, or stayed away.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to join the choir, Elizabeth." It was
+Mr. Hearty's thank-offering for sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Hearty!" she simpered. "I'm sure I
+couldn't sing well enough."</p>
+
+<p>"You sing very nicely, Elizabeth. I have noticed
+it on Sunday evenings when you come round. You
+have a very good high soprano."</p>
+
+<p>A quiver passed through Mrs. Bindle. She drew
+herself up, and her lips seemed to take on a softer line.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it's very good of you to say so," she
+responded gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall still sing in the choir," said Mr. Hearty;
+"but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A heavy pounding overhead caused him to start
+violently. It was Mrs. Hearty's curfew.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle rose and Mr. Hearty accompanied her
+to the street-door. Alice was in the passage, apparently
+on her way to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Elizabeth," and Mr. Hearty closed
+the door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>She paused to open her umbrella, it was spotting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+with rain and Mrs. Bindle was careful of her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly through the open transom she heard a
+surprised scream and the sound of scuffling.</p>
+
+<p>"You beast," cried a feminine voice. "I'll tell
+missis, that I will."</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Bindle turned and ran full-tilt into a
+policeman.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"Gospel bells, gospel bells, hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle accompanied her favourite
+hymn with bangs from the flat-iron as she strove to
+coax one of Bindle's shirts to smoothness.</p>
+
+<p>She invariably worked to the tune of "Gospel Bells."
+Of the hymn itself she possessed two words, "gospel"
+and "bells"; but the tune was hers to the most
+insignificant semi-quaver, and an unlimited supply of
+"hms" did the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Turning the shirt at the word "gospel," she brought
+the iron down full in the middle of what, judging from
+the power she put into the stroke, might have been
+Bindle's back.</p>
+
+<p>"Bells," she sang with emphasis, and proceeded
+to trail off into the "hms."</p>
+
+<p>With Mrs. Bindle, singing reflected her mood. When
+indignation or anger gripped her soul, "Gospel Bells"
+was rendered with a vigour that penetrated to Mrs.
+Grimps and Mrs. Sawney.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as her mood mellowed, so would the tune<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+soften, almost dying away until, possibly, a stray thought
+of Bindle brought about a crescendo passage, capable
+of being developed into full forte, brass-wind and
+tympani.</p>
+
+<p>After one of these full-throated passages, the thought
+of her brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, mellowed the stream
+of melody passing through her thin, slightly parted
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>It had reached an almost caressing softness, when
+a knock at the door caused her to stop suddenly.
+A moment later, the iron was banged upon
+the rest, and she glanced down at her apron. To
+use her own phrase, she was the "pink of neatness."</p>
+
+<p>Walking across the kitchen and along the short
+passage, she threw open the door with the air of one
+who was prepared to defend the sacred domestic hearth
+against all comers.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come about the 'ouse, mum." A mild-looking
+little man with a dirty collar and a deprecating manner
+stood before her, sucking nervously at a hollow tooth,
+the squeak of which his friends had learned to live
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"The house!" repeated Mrs. Bindle aggressively.
+"What house?"</p>
+
+<p>"This 'ouse wot's to let, mum." The little man
+struggled to extract a newspaper from his pocket.
+"I'd like to take it," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you would, would you?" Mrs. Bindle eyed
+him with disfavour. "Well, it's not to let," and with
+that she banged the door in the little man's face,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+just as his pocket gave up the struggle and released a
+soiled copy of <i>The Fulham Signal</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He started back, the paper falling upon the tiled-path
+that led from the gate to the front-door.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a minute he stood staring at the door,
+as if not quite realising what had happened. Then,
+picking up the paper, he gazed at it with a puzzled
+expression, turned to a marked passage under the heading
+"Houses to Let," and read:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>HOUSE TO LET.&mdash;Four-roomed house to let in
+Fulham. Easy access to bus, tram and train. Rent
+15/6 a week. Immediate possession. Apply to
+occupier, 7 Fenton Street, Fulham, S.W.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>He looked at the number on the door, back again
+at the paper, then once more at the number. Apparently
+satisfied that there was no mistake, he knocked
+again, a feeble, half-hearted knock that testified to
+the tremors within him.</p>
+
+<p>He had been graded C3; but he possessed a wife
+who was, physically, A1. It was the knowledge
+that she would demand an explanation if he failed
+to secure the house, after which she had sent him
+hot-foot, that inspired him with sufficient courage
+to make a second attempt to interview Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>With inward tremblings, he waited for the door to
+open again. As he stood, hoping against hope in his
+coward heart that the summons had not been heard,
+a big, heavily-hipped woman, in a dirty black-and-white
+foulard blouse, a draggled green skirt, and
+shapeless stays, slid through the gate and waddled
+up the path.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So you got 'ere fust," she gasped, her flushed face
+showing that she had been hurrying. "Well, well, it
+can't be 'elped, I suppose, fust come fust served. I
+always says it and always shall."</p>
+
+<p>The little man had swung round, and now stood
+blinking up at the new arrival, who entirely blocked
+his line of retreat.</p>
+
+<p>"Knocked, 'ave you?" she enquired, fanning her
+flushed face with a folded newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded; but his gaze was directed over her
+heaving shoulder at a man and woman, with a little
+girl between them, approaching from the opposite
+side of the way.</p>
+
+<p>As the new arrivals entered the garden, the stout
+woman explained that "this gentleman" had already
+knocked.</p>
+
+<p>"P'raps they ain't up yet," suggested the man with
+the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they ought to be," said the stout woman with
+conviction.</p>
+
+<p>Another woman now joined the throng, her turned-up
+sleeves and the man's tweed cap on her head,
+kept in place by a long, amber-headed hat-pin, testifying
+to the limited time she had bestowed upon her
+toilette.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it took?" she demanded of the woman with
+the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Dunno!" was the reply. "She ain't opened the
+door yet."</p>
+
+<p>"She opened it once," said the little man.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot she say?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Said it wasn't to let, then banged it to in my
+face," was the injured response.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, let me 'ave a try," cried the woman in the
+foulard blouse, as she grasped the knocker and proceeded
+to awaken the echoes of Fenton Street. Corple Street
+at one end and Bransdon Road at the other, were
+included in the sound-waves that emanated from the
+Bindles' knocker.</p>
+
+<p>Several neighbours, including Mrs. Grimps and Mrs.
+Sawney, came to their doors and gazed at the collection
+of people that now entirely blocked the pathway of
+No. 7. Three other women had joined the throng,
+together with a rag-and-bone man in dilapidated
+clothing, accompanied by a donkey and cart.</p>
+
+<p>"A shame I calls it, a-keepin' folks 'angin' about like
+this," said one of the new arrivals.</p>
+
+<p>"P'raps it's let," said the rag-and-bone man.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why don't they say so?" snapped she with
+the tweed cap and hat-pin.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ave another go, missis," suggested the man
+with the little girl. "I'm losin' 'alf a day over
+this."</p>
+
+<p>Inspired by this advice, the big woman reached
+forward to seize the knocker. At that moment the
+door was wrenched open, and Mrs. Bindle appeared.
+She had removed her apron and brushed her thin,
+sandy hair, which was drawn back from her sharp,
+hatchet-like face so that not a hair wantoned from
+the restraining influence of the knot behind.</p>
+
+<p>Grim, with indrawn lips and the light of battle in
+her eyes she glared, first at the little man with whom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+she had already held parley, then at the woman in the
+foulard blouse.</p>
+
+<p>At chapel, there was no more meek and docile
+"Daughter of the Lord" than Mrs. Bindle. To her,
+religion was an ever-ready help and sustenance; but
+there was something in her life that bulked even larger
+than her Faith, although she would have been the first
+to deny it. That thing was her Home.</p>
+
+<p>In keeping the domestic temple of her hearth as
+she conceived it should be kept, Mrs. Bindle toiled
+ceaselessly. It was her fetish. She worshipped at
+chapel as a stepping-stone to post-mortem glory;
+but her home was the real altar at which she sacrificed.</p>
+
+<p>As she gazed at the "rabble," as she mentally
+characterised it, littering the tiled-path of the front
+garden, which only that morning she had cleaned, the
+rage of David entered her heart; but she was a God-fearing
+woman who disliked violence&mdash;until it was
+absolutely necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it you knocking?" she demanded of the
+big woman in the foulard blouse. Her voice was sharp
+as the edge of a razor; but restrained.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, my dear," replied the woman comfortably,
+"I come about the 'ouse."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you have, have you?" cried Mrs. Bindle.
+"And are these your friends?" Her eyes for a moment
+left those of her antagonist and took in the queue
+which, by now, overflowed the path into the roadway.</p>
+
+<p>"Look 'ere, I'll give you sixteen bob a week," broke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+in the woman with the tweed cap and the hat-pin,
+instantly rendering herself an Ishmael.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, none o' that!" cried an angry female voice.
+"Fair do's."</p>
+
+<p>There was a murmur of approval from the others,
+which was interrupted by Mrs. Bindle's clear-cut,
+incisive voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of my garden, and be off, the lot of you,"
+she cried, taking a half-step in the direction of the big
+woman, to whom she addressed herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it let?" enquired the rag-and-bone man from
+the rear.</p>
+
+<p>"Is what let?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'ouse, mum," said the rag-and-bone man,
+whose profession demanded tact and politeness.</p>
+
+<p>"This house is not to let," was the angry retort,
+"never was to let, and never will be to let till I'm gone.
+Now you just be off with you, or&mdash;&mdash;" she paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Or wot?" demanded she of the tweed cap and
+hat-pin, desirous of rehabilitating herself with the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll send for a policeman," was Mrs. Bindle's
+rejoinder. She still restrained her natural instincts
+in a vice-like self-control. Her hands shook slightly;
+but not with fear. It was the trembling of the tigress
+preparing to spring.</p>
+
+<p>"Then wot about this advert?" cried the man
+with the little girl, extending the newspaper towards
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, wot about it?" demanded the woman in
+the foulard blouse, extending her paper in turn.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's no advertisement about this house,"
+said Mrs. Bindle, ignoring the papers, "and you'd
+better go away. Pity you haven't got something better
+to do than to come disturbin' me in the midst of my
+ironin'," and with that she banged the door and
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>A murmur of anger passed along the queue, anger
+which portended trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice way to treat people," said a little woman
+with a dirty face, a dingy black bonnet and a velvet
+dolman, to which portions of the original jet-trimming
+still despairingly adhered. "Some folks don't seem to
+know 'ow to be'ave."</p>
+
+<p>There was another murmur of agreement.</p>
+
+<p>"Kick the blinkin' door in," suggested a pacifist.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to get at 'er with my nails," said a sharp-faced
+woman with a baby in her arms. "I know '<i>er</i>
+sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Deserves to 'ave 'er stutterin' windows smashed,
+the stuck-up baggage!" cried another.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo, look at all them people."</p>
+
+<p>A big, puffy man with a person that rendered his
+boots invisible, guided the hand-cart he was pushing
+into the kerb in front of No. 7 Fenton Street. A pale,
+dispirited lad was harnessed to the vehicle by a dilapidated
+piece of much-knotted rope strung across his
+narrow chest. As the barrow came to a standstill,
+he allowed the rope to drop to the ground and, stepping
+out of the harness, he turned an apathetic and unspeculative
+eye towards the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The big man, whose clothing consisted of a shirt, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+pair of trousers and some braces, stood looking at the
+applicants for the altar of Mrs. Bindle's life. The
+crowd returned the stare with interest. The furniture
+piled upon the barrow caused them some anxiety.
+Was that the explanation of the unfriendly reception
+accorded them?</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, Charley, when you've done a-drinkin'
+in this bloomin' beauty-show, you can give me a
+'and."</p>
+
+<p>"'Oo are you calling a beauty-show?" demanded
+the woman in the dolman. "You ain't got much to
+talk about, with a stummick like yours."</p>
+
+<p>"My mistake, missis," said the big man imperturbably.
+"Sorry I made you cry." Then, turning to
+Charley, he added: "If you 'adn't such a thick 'ead,
+Charley, you'd know it was a sugar queue. They're
+wearin' too much for a beauty-show. Now, then,
+over the top, my lad." He indicated the railings with
+a nod, the gateway was blocked.</p>
+
+<p>With the leisurely movements of a fatalist, Charley
+moved his inconspicuous person towards the railings
+of No. 7, while the big man proceeded to untie the
+rope that bound a miscellaneous collection of household
+goods to the hand-cart, an operation which entirely
+absorbed the attention of the queue.</p>
+
+<p>"You took it?" interrogated the rag-and-bone
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry, cocky," said the big man as he
+lifted from the barrow a cane-bottomed chair, through
+which somebody had evidently sat, and placed it on
+the pavement. "Once inside the garding and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+'ouse is mine. 'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he admonished
+the lad, who was standing by the kerb
+as if reluctant to trespass.</p>
+
+<p>With unexpressive face, the boy turned and climbed
+the railings.</p>
+
+<p>"Catch 'old," cried the man, thrusting into Charley's
+unwilling hands a dilapidated saucepan.</p>
+
+<p>The boy tossed it on to the small flower-bed in the
+centre of the garden, where Mrs. Bindle was endeavouring
+to cultivate geraniums from slips supplied by a
+fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel. These
+geranium slips were the stars in the grey firmament of
+her life. She tended them assiduously, and always
+kept a jug of water just inside the parlour-window with
+which to discourage investigating cats. It was she
+too that had planted the lobelia-border.</p>
+
+<p>The queue seemed hypnotised by the overwhelming
+personality of the big man. With the fatalism of
+despair they decided that the gods were against them,
+and that he really had achieved the success he claimed.
+They still lingered, as if instinct told them that dramatic
+moments were pending.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt but wot I'll be very comfortable,"
+remarked the big man contentedly. "'Ere, catch
+'old, Charley," he cried, tossing the lad a colander,
+possessed of more holes than the manufacturer had
+ever dreamed of.</p>
+
+<p>Charley turned too late, and the colander caught a
+geranium which, alone among its fellows, had shown
+a half-hearted tendency to bloom. That particular
+flower was Mrs. Bindle's ewe-lamb.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ain't 'e a knock-out?" cried the big man, pausing
+for a moment to gaze at his offspring. "Don't take
+after 'is pa, and that's a fact," and he exposed three
+or four dark-brown stumps of teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"P'raps you ain't 'is father," giggled a feminine
+voice at the end of the queue.</p>
+
+<p>The big man turned in the direction from which the
+voice had come, stared stolidly at an inoffensive little
+man, who had "not guilty" written all over him,
+then, deliberately swinging round, he lifted a small
+wicker clothes-basket from the cart.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, catch it, Charley," he cried, and without
+waiting to assure himself of Charley's willingness or
+ability to do so, he pitched it over the railings.</p>
+
+<p>Charley turned just in time to see the basket coming.
+He endeavoured to avoid it, tripped over the colander,
+and sat down in the centre of the geranium-bed, carrying
+riot and desolation with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you a&mdash;&mdash;" but Charley was never to know
+how he appeared to his father at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>Observing that several heads were turned towards
+the front door, the eyes of the big man had instinctively
+followed their direction. It was what he saw there
+that had caused him to pause in describing his offspring.</p>
+
+<p>Standing very still, her face deathly pale, with no
+sign of her lips beyond a thin, grey line, stood Mrs.
+Bindle, her eyes fixed upon the geranium-bed and the
+desolation reigning there. Her breath came in short
+jerks.</p>
+
+<p>With an activity of which his previous movements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+had given no indication, Charley climbed the railings
+to the comparative safety of the street.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon the big man.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, come along, let me get in," he cried, pushing
+his way through the crowd, which showed no inclination
+for resistance. The little man who had first
+arrived was already well outside, talking to the woman
+with the tweed cap and hat-pin, while she of the
+foulard blouse was edging down the path towards
+the gate. None showed the least desire to protest
+against the big man's claim to the house by right of
+conquest&mdash;and he passed on to his Waterloo.</p>
+
+<p>"I taken this 'ouse," he cried, as he approached
+the grim figure on the doorstep. "Fifteen an' a kick
+a week, an' cheap at 'alf the price," he added jovially.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he called out over
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Charley, however, stood gazing at his parent with
+a greater show of interest than he had hitherto manifested.
+He seemed instinctively to grasp the dramatic
+possibilities of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought I'd bring the sticks wiv me, missis," said
+the man genially. "Nothink like makin' sure in these
+days." He stopped suddenly. Without a word, Mrs.
+Bindle had turned and disappeared into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"May as well pay a deposit," he remarked, thrusting
+a dirty hand into his trouser pocket. He glanced
+over his shoulder and winked jocosely at the woman
+with the foulard blouse.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing he knew was that Drama with a
+capital "D" had taken a hand in the game. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+crowd drew its breath with almost a sob of surprised
+expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>Into Charley's vacant eyes there came a look of
+interest, and into the big man's mouth, just as he
+turned his head, there came a something that was wet
+and tasted odiously of carbolic.</p>
+
+<p>He staggered back, his eyes bulging, as Mrs. Bindle,
+armed with a large mop, which she had taken the
+precaution to wet, stood regarding him like an avenging
+fury. Her eyes blazed, and her nostrils were distended
+like those of a frightened thoroughbred.</p>
+
+<p>Before the big man had time to splutter his protests,
+she had swung round the mop and brought the handle
+down with a crack upon his bare, bald head. Then,
+once more swinging round to the business end of the
+mop, she drew back a step and charged.</p>
+
+<p>The mop got the big man just beneath the chin.
+For a moment he stood on one leg, his arms extended,
+like the figure of Mercury on the Piccadilly Circus
+fountain.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle gave another thrust to the mop, and
+down he went with a thud, his head coming with a
+sharp crack against the tiles of the path.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd murmured its delight. Charley danced
+from one foot to the other, the expression on his face
+proving conclusively that the vacuous look with which
+he had arrived was merely a mask assumed for defensive
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up!"</p>
+
+<p>Into these two words Mrs. Bindle precipitated an
+amount of feeling that thrilled the crowd. The big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+man, however, lay prone, his eyes fixed in fear upon
+the end of the mop.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up!" repeated Mrs. Bindle. "I'll teach you
+to come disturbing a respectable home. Look at my
+garden."</p>
+
+<p>As he still made no attempt to move, she turned
+suddenly and doubled along the passage, reappearing
+a moment later with a pail of water with which she
+had been washing out the scullery. Without a moment's
+hesitation she emptied the contents over the recumbent
+figure of the big man. The house-cloth fell across
+his eyes, like a bandage, and the hearthstone took
+him full on the nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo-er!"</p>
+
+<p>That one act of Mrs. Bindle's had saved from entire
+annihilation the faith of a child. For the first time in
+his existence, Charley realised that there was a God
+of retribution.</p>
+
+<p>Murmurs of approval came from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it to 'im, missis, 'e done it," shouted one.
+"It warn't the kid's fault, blinkin' 'Un."</p>
+
+<p>"Dirty profiteer," cried the thin woman. "Look
+at 'is stummick," she added as if in support of her
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up!" Again Mrs. Bindle's hard, uninflected
+words sounded like the accents of destiny.</p>
+
+<p>She accompanied her exhortation by a jab from the
+mop-end of her weapon directed at the centre of that
+portion of the big man's anatomy which had been
+advanced as proof of his profiteering propensities.</p>
+
+<p>He raised himself a few inches; but Mrs. Bindle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+with all the inconsistency of a woman, dashed the mop
+once more in his face, and down went his head again
+with a crack.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley!" he roared; but there was nothing of
+the Paladin about Charley. Between him and his
+father at that moment were eleven years of heavy-handed
+tyranny, and Charley remained on the safety-side
+of the railings.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up! You great, hulkin' brute," cried Mrs.
+Bindle, reversing the mop and getting in a stroke at
+his solar-plexus which would have made her fame in
+pig-sticking.</p>
+
+<p>"Grrrrumph!" The fat man's exclamation was
+involuntary.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up, I tell you," she reiterated. "You fat,
+ugly son of Satan, you Beelzebub, you leper, you Judas,
+you&mdash;&mdash;" she paused a moment in her search for the
+undesirables from Holy Writ. Then, with inspiration,
+she added&mdash;"Barabbas."</p>
+
+<p>The man made another effort to rise; but Mrs.
+Bindle brought the end of the mop down upon his
+head with a crack that sounded like a pistol-shot.</p>
+
+<p>The expression on Charley's face changed. The
+lower jaw lifted. The loose, vacuous mouth spread.
+Charley was grinning.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the man lay still. Mrs. Bindle was
+standing over him with the mop, a tense and righteously
+indignant St. George over a particularly evil dragon.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he gave tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"'Elp!" he yelled. "I'm bein' murdered. 'Elp!
+Charley, where are you?" But Charley's grin had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+expanded and he was actually rubbing his hands with
+enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle brought the mop down on the man's
+mouth. "Stop it, you blaspheming son o' Belial,"
+she cried.</p>
+
+<p>The big man roared the louder; but he made no
+effort to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere comes a flatty," cried a voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Slop's a-comin'," echoed another, and a minute
+later, a clean-shaven embodiment of youthful dignity
+and self-possession, in a helmet and blue uniform,
+approached and began to make his way through the
+crowd towards the Bindles' gate.</p>
+
+<p>From the position in which he lay the big man,
+unable to see that assistance was at hand, continued
+to roar for help.</p>
+
+<p>At the approach of this symbol of the law, Mrs.
+Bindle stepped back and brought her mop to the stand-at-ease
+position.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman looked from one to the other, and
+then proceeded to ferret somewhere in the tails of his
+tunic, whence he produced a notebook. This was
+obviously a case requiring literary expression.</p>
+
+<p>The big man, seeing Mrs. Bindle fall back, turned
+his head and caught a glimpse of the policeman. Very
+cautiously he raised himself to a sitting posture.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been murderin' me," he said, with one eye
+fixed warily upon the mop. "'Ere, Charley!" he
+cried, looking over his left shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Charley reluctantly approached, regretful that law
+and order had triumphed over red revolution.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ain't she been tryin' to kill me?" demanded the
+big man of his offspring.</p>
+
+<p>"Biffed 'im on the 'ead wiv the 'andle," corroborated
+the boy in a toneless voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Poured water over me and 'it me in the stummick
+too, didn't she, Charley?" Once more the big man
+turned to his son for corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>"Got 'im a rare 'un too!" agreed Charley, with a
+feeling in his voice that caused his father to look at
+him sharply. "Sloshed 'im on the jaw too," he added,
+as if finding pleasure in dwelling upon the sufferings
+of his parent.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish to charge her?" asked the policeman
+in an official voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'Charge me!'" broke in Mrs. Bindle. "'Charge
+me!' I should like to see 'im do it. See what 'e's
+done to my geraniums, bringing his filthy sticks into
+my front garden. 'Charge me!'" she repeated. "Just
+let him try it!" and she brought the mop to a position
+from which it could be launched at the big man's head.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively he sank down again on to the path,
+and the policeman interposed his body between the
+weapon and the vanquished.</p>
+
+<p>"There's plenty of witnesses here to prove what he
+done," cried Mrs. Bindle shrilly.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the big man raised himself to a sitting
+posture; but Mrs. Bindle had no intention of allowing
+him to control the situation. To her a policeman
+meant justice, and to this self-possessed lad in the
+uniform of unlimited authority she opened her heart
+and, at the same time, the vials of her wrath.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Ere was I ironin' in my kitchen when this
+rabble," she indicated the crowd with the handle of
+the mop, "descended upon me like the plague of
+locusts." To Mrs. Bindle, scriptural allusion was a
+necessity.</p>
+
+<p>"They said they wanted to take my 'ouse. Said I'd
+told them it was to let, the perjured scum of Judas.
+Then <i>he</i> came along"&mdash;she pointed to her victim who
+was gingerly feeling the bump that Mrs. Bindle's mop
+had raised&mdash;"and threw all that dirty lumber into
+my garden, and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;" Here her voice broke,
+for to Mrs. Bindle those geranium slips were very
+dear.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better get up."</p>
+
+<p>At the policeman's words the big man rose heavily
+to his feet. For a moment he stood still, as if to make
+quite sure that no bones were broken. Then his hand
+went to his neck-cloth and he produced a piece of
+hearthstone which had, apparently, become detached
+from the parent slab.</p>
+
+<p>"Threw bricks at me," he complained, holding out
+the piece of hearthstone to the policeman.</p>
+
+<p>"Ananias!" came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising
+retort.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to charge her?" asked the policeman
+brusquely.</p>
+
+<p>"Serves 'im jolly well right," cried the woman with
+the tweed cap and hat-pin, pushing her way in front
+of a big man who obstructed her view.</p>
+
+<p>"Oughter be run-in 'isself," agreed a pallid woman
+with a shawl over her head.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look wot 'e done to 'er garding," mumbled the
+rag-and-bone man, pointing at the flower-bed with
+the air of one who has just made an important discovery.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the likes of 'im wot makes strikes," commented
+the woman in the dolman. "Blinkin'
+profiteer."</p>
+
+<p>"She's got pluck, any'ow," said a telephone mechanic,
+who had joined the crowd just before Charley's father
+had bent before the wind of Mrs. Bindle's displeasure.
+"Knocked 'im out in the first round. Regular George
+Carpenter," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"You get them things out of my garden. If you
+don't I'll give you in charge."</p>
+
+<p>The big man blinked, a puzzled expression creeping
+into his eyes. He looked at the policeman uncomprehendingly.
+This was an aspect of the case that had
+not, hitherto, struck him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they your things?" asked the policeman,
+intent upon disentangling the situation before proceeding
+to use the pencil, the point of which he was
+meditatively sucking.</p>
+
+<p>Charley's father nodded. He was still thinking over
+Mrs. Bindle's remark. It seemed to open up disconcerting
+possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, what are you going to do?" demanded
+the policeman sternly. "Do you wish to make a
+charge?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will," said Mrs. Bindle, "unless 'e takes 'is
+furniture away and pays for the damage to my flowers.
+I'll charge 'im, the great, 'ulking brute, attacking a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+defenceless woman because he knows 'er 'usband's
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, missis, you 'ave 'im quodded,"
+called out the rag-and-bone man. "'E didn't ought
+to 'ave done that to your garding."</p>
+
+<p>"Tryin' to swank us 'e'd taken the 'ouse," cried
+the woman with the tweed cap and hat-pin. "I see
+through 'im from the first, I did. There ain't many
+men wot can throw dust in my eyes," she added,
+looking eagerly round for a dissenting look.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo, 'ullo!" cried a voice from the outskirts of
+the crowd. "Somebody givin' somethink away, or
+is it a fire? 'Ere, let me pass, I'm the cove wot pays
+the rent," and Bindle pushed his genial way through
+the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>They made way without protest. The advent of
+the newcomer suggested further dramatic developments,
+possibly even a fight.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo, Tichborne!" cried Bindle, catching sight
+of the big man. "Been scrappin'?"</p>
+
+<p>The three protagonists in the drama turned, as if
+with relief, to face this new phase of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oo's 'e?" enquired Bindle of the policeman,
+indicating the big man with a jerk of his thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been tryin' to murder me, and if you were a
+man, Joe Bindle, you'd kill 'im."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle subjected the big man to an elaborate scrutiny.
+"Looks to me," he remarked drily, "as if someone's
+got in before me. Wot's 'appened?" He looked
+interrogatingly up at the policeman.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Oly 'Orace," he cried suddenly, as he caught
+sight of the miscellaneous collection of furniture that
+lay about the geranium bed. "What's that little
+pawnshop a-doin' on our front garden?"</p>
+
+<p>With the aid of the rag-and-bone man and the woman
+with the tweed cap and hat-pin, the whole situation
+was explained and expounded to both Bindle and the
+policeman.</p>
+
+<p>When he had heard everything, Bindle turned to
+the big man, who stood sulkily awaiting events.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look 'ere, cully," he said. "You didn't
+oughter start doin' them sort o' things with a figure
+like yours. When Mrs. B. gets 'old of a broom, or
+a mop, the safest thing to do is to draw in your solar-plexus
+an' run. It 'urts less. Now, speakin' as a
+Christian to a bloomin' 'eathen wot's done 'imself
+pretty well, judgin' from the size of 'is pinafore, you'd
+better send for the coachman, 'arness up that there
+dray o' yours, carry orf them bits o' sticks an' let
+bygones be bygones. Ain't that good advice?" He
+turned to the policeman for corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>There was a flicker of a smile at the corners of the
+policeman's mouth, which seemed not so very many
+years before to have been lisping baby language.
+He looked at the big man. It was not for him to
+advise.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, Charley, blaaarst you," cried the big man,
+pushing his way to the gate. He had decided that the
+dice had gone against him. "Get them things on to
+the blinkin' barrer, you stutterin' young pup. Wot the
+purple&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here, that's enough of that," said a quiet, determined
+voice, and the soft lines of the policeman's face
+hardened.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot she want to say it was to let for?" he grumbled
+as he loped towards the hand-cart.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere 'ave I come wiv all these things to take the
+blinkin' 'ouse, then there's all this ruddy fuss. Are
+you goin' to get over into that blinkin' garden and
+fetch out them stutterin' things, or must I chuck you
+over?"</p>
+
+<p>The last remark was addressed to Charley, who, with
+a wary eye on his parent, had been watching events,
+hoping against hope that the policeman would manifest
+signs of aggression, and carry on the good work that
+Mrs. Bindle had begun.</p>
+
+<p>Charley glanced interrogatingly at the policeman.
+Seeing in his eye no encouragement to mutiny, he
+sidled towards the gate, a watchful eye still on his
+father. A moment later he was engaged in handing
+the furniture over the railings.</p>
+
+<p>After the man had deposited the colander, a tin-bath,
+and two saucepans in the barrow, he seemed suddenly
+smitten with an idea.</p>
+
+<p>He tugged a soiled newspaper from his trouser pocket.
+Glancing at it, he walked over to where the policeman
+was engaged in moving on the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Read that," he said, thrusting the paper under the
+officer's nose and pointing to a passage with a dirty
+forefinger. "Don't that say the blinkin' 'ouse is to
+let? You oughter run 'er in for false&mdash;&mdash;" He paused.
+"For false&mdash;&mdash;" he repeated.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With a motion of his hand, the policeman brushed
+aside the newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>"Move along there, please. Don't block up the
+footpath," he said.</p>
+
+<p>At length the barrow was laden.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman stood by with the air of a man whose
+duty it is to see the thing through.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd still loitered. They had even yet hopes
+of a breach of the peace.</p>
+
+<p>The big man was reluctant to go without a final
+effort to rehabilitate himself. Once more he drew the
+paper from his pocket and approached the policeman.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot she put that in for?" he demanded, indicating
+the advertisement.</p>
+
+<p>Ignoring the remark, the policeman drew his notebook
+once more from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall want your name and address," he said with
+an official air.</p>
+
+<p>"Wotjer want it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, come along," said the policeman, and
+the big man gave his name and address.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot she do it for?" he repeated, "an' wot's going
+to 'appen to 'er for 'ittin' me in the stummick?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better get along," said the policeman.</p>
+
+<p>With a grumble in his throat, the big man placed
+himself between the shafts of the barrow and, having
+blasted Charley into action, moved off.</p>
+
+<p>"Made a rare mess of the garding, ain't 'e?"
+remarked the rag-and-bone man to the woman with
+the tweed cap and the hat-pin.</p>
+
+<p>"Blinkin' profiteer!" was her comment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>"It's all your fault. Look wot they done." Mrs.
+Bindle surveyed the desolation which, that morning,
+had been a garden.</p>
+
+<p>The bed was trodden down, the geraniums broken,
+and the lobelia border showed big gaps in its blue and
+greenness.</p>
+
+<p>"It's always the same with anything I 'ave," she
+continued. "You always spoil it."</p>
+
+<p>"But it wasn't me," protested Bindle. "It was
+that big cove with the pinafore."</p>
+
+<p>"Who put that advertisement in?" demanded Mrs.
+Bindle darkly. "That's what <i>I</i> should like to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody wot 'ad put the wrong number," suggested
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd wrong number them if I caught them."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she turned and made a bolt inside the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle regarded the open door in surprise. A moment
+later his quick ears caught the sound of Mrs.
+Bindle's hysterical sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>"Now ain't that jest like a woman?" was his
+comment. "She put 'im to sleep in the first round,
+an' still she ain't 'appy. Funny things, women," he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>That evening as Mrs. Bindle closed the front door
+behind her on her way to the Wednesday temperance
+service, she turned her face to the garden; it had been
+in her mind all day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She blinked incredulously. The lobelia seemed bluer
+than ever, and within the circular border was a veritable
+riot of flowering geraniums.</p>
+
+<p>"It's that Bindle again," she muttered with indrawn
+lips as she turned towards the gate. "Pity he hasn't
+got something better to do with his money." Nevertheless
+she placed upon the supper-table an apple-tart
+that had been made for to-morrow's dinner, to which
+she added a cup of coffee, of which Bindle was
+particularly fond.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"I see they're starting summer-camps." Mrs.
+Bindle looked up from reading the previous
+evening's paper. She was invariably twelve
+hours late with the world's news.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle continued his breakfast. He was too
+absorbed in Mrs. Bindle's method of serving dried
+haddock with bubble-and-squeak to evince much
+interest in alien things.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," she continued after a pause, "don't
+you answer. Your ears are in your stomach. Pleasant
+companion you are. I might as well be on a desert
+island for all the company you are."</p>
+
+<p>"If you wasn't such a damn good cook, Mrs. B., I
+might find time to say pretty things to you." It was
+only in relation to her own cooking that Bindle's
+conversational lapses passed without rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>"There are to be camps for men, camps for women,
+and family camps," continued Mrs. Bindle without
+raising her eyes from the paper before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Personally myself I says put me among the gals."
+The remark reached Mrs. Bindle through a mouthful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+of haddock and bubble-and-squeak, plus a fish-bone.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't deserve to have a decent home, the
+way you talk."</p>
+
+<p>There were times when no answer, however gentle,
+was capable of turning aside Mrs. Bindle's wrath.
+On Sunday mornings in particular she found the
+burden of Bindle's transgressions weigh heavily upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle sucked contentedly at a hollow tooth. He
+was feeling generously inclined towards all humanity.
+Haddock, bubble-and-squeak, and his own philosophy
+enabled him to withstand the impact of Mrs. Bindle's
+most vigorous offensive.</p>
+
+<p>"It's years since I had a holiday," she continued
+complainingly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is, Mrs. B.," agreed Bindle, drawing his pipe
+from his coat pocket and proceeding to charge it from
+a small oblong tin box. "We ain't exactly wot you'd
+call an 'oneymoon couple, you an' me."</p>
+
+<p>"The war's over."</p>
+
+<p>"It is," he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why can't we have a holiday?" she
+demanded, looking up aggressively from her paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I asks you, Mrs. B.," he said, as he returned the
+tin box to his pocket, "can you see you an' me in a
+bell-tent, or paddlin', or playin' ring-a-ring-a-roses?"
+and he proceeded to light his pipe with the blissful
+air of a man who knows that it is Sunday, and that
+The Yellow Ostrich will open its hospitable doors a
+few hours hence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It says they're very comfortable," Mrs. Bindle
+continued, her eyes still glued to the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot is?"</p>
+
+<p>"The tents."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to ask Ging wot a bell-tent's like,
+'e'd sort o' surprise you. It's worse'n a wife, 'otter
+than religion, colder than a blue-ribboner. When
+it's 'ot it bakes you, when it's cold it lets you freeze,
+and when it's blowin' 'ell an' tinkers, it 'oofs it, an'
+leaves you with nothink on, a-blushin' like a curate
+'avin' 'is first dip with the young women in the choir.
+That's wot a bell-tent is, Mrs. B. In the army they
+calls 'em 'ell-tents."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't talk to me," she snapped as she rose
+and proceeded to clear away the breakfast-things,
+during which she expressed the state of her feelings
+by the vigour with which she banged every utensil she
+handled. As she did so Bindle proceeded to explain
+and expound the salient characteristics of the army
+bell-tent.</p>
+
+<p>"When you wants it to stand up," he continued, "it
+comes down, you bein' underneath. When you
+wants it to come down, nothing on earth'll move it,
+till you goes inside to 'ave a look round an' see wot's
+the trouble, then down it comes on top o' you. It's
+a game, that's wot it is," he added with conviction,
+"a game wot nobody ain't goin' to win but the
+tent."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on talking, you're not hurting me," said Mrs.
+Bindle, with indrawn lower lip, as she brought down
+the teapot upon the dresser with a super bang.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've 'eard Ging talk o' twins, war, women, an'
+the beer-shortage; but to 'ear 'im at 'is best, you got
+to get 'im to talk about bell-tents."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody else has a holiday except me." Mrs.
+Bindle was not to be diverted from her subject. "Here
+am I, slavin' my fingers to the bone, inchin' and
+pinchin' to keep you in comfort, an' I can't 'ave a
+holiday. It's a shame, that's what it is, and it's all
+your fault." She paused in the act of wiping
+out the inside of the frying-pan, and stood before
+Bindle like an accusing fury. Anger always sullied
+the purity of her diction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why don't you 'ave an 'oliday if you set
+yer 'eart on it? I ain't got nothink to say agin it."
+He continued to puff contentedly at his pipe, wondering
+what had become of the paper-boy. Bindle had become
+too inured to the lurid qualities of domesticity to allow
+them to perturb him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow can I go alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be safe enough."</p>
+
+<p>"You beast!" Bindle was startled by the vindictiveness
+with which the words were uttered.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes there was silence, punctuated by
+Mrs. Bindle's vigorous clearing away. Presently she
+passed over to the sink and turned on the tap.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice thing for a married woman to go away
+alone," she hurled at Bindle over her shoulder, amidst
+the rushing of water.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, take 'Earty," he suggested, with the air
+of a man anxious to find a way out of a difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a dirty-minded beast," was the retort.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"An' this Sunday, too. Oh, naughty!"</p>
+
+<p>"You never take me anywhere." Mrs. Bindle was
+not to be denied.</p>
+
+<p>"I took you to church once," he said reminiscently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you take me out now?" she demanded,
+ignoring his remark.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he remarked, as he dug into the bowl of his
+pipe with a match-stick, "when you caught a bus,
+you don't go on a-runnin' after it, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you get a week off and take me
+away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll think about it." Bindle rose and,
+picking up his hat, left the room, with the object of
+seeking the missing paper-boy.</p>
+
+<p>The loneliness of her life was one of Mrs. Bindle's
+stock grievances. If she had been reminded of the
+Chinese proverb that to have friends you must deserve
+friends, she would have waxed scornful. Friends,
+she seemed to think, were a matter of luck, like a
+goose in a raffle, or a rich uncle.</p>
+
+<p>"It's little enough pleasure I get," she would cry, in
+moments of passionate protest.</p>
+
+<p>To this, Bindle would sometimes reply that "it's
+wantin' a thing wot makes you get it." Sometimes
+he would go on to elaborate the theory into the impossibility
+of "'avin' a thing for supper an' savin' it
+for breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>By this, he meant to convey to Mrs. Bindle that
+she was too set on post-mortem joys to get the full
+flavour of those of this world.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle possessed the soul of a potential martyr.
+If she found she were enjoying herself, she would
+become convinced that, somewhere associated with it,
+must be Sin with a capital "S", unless of course
+the enjoyment were directly connected with the
+chapel.</p>
+
+<p>She was fully convinced that it was wrong to be
+happy. Laughter inspired her with distrust, as laughter
+rose from carnal thoughts carnally expressed. She
+fought with a relentless courage the old Adam within
+herself, inspired always by the thought that her
+reward would come in another and a better world.</p>
+
+<p>Her theology was that you must give up in this world
+all that your "carnal nature" cries out for, and your
+reward in the next world will be a sort of perpetual
+jamboree, where you will see the damned being boiled
+in oil, or nipped with red-hot pincers by little devils
+with curly tails. In this she had little to learn either
+from a Dante, or the Spanish Inquisition.</p>
+
+<p>The Biblical descriptions of heaven she accepted in
+all their literalness. She expected golden streets and
+jewelled gates, wings of ineffable whiteness and harps
+of an inspired sweetness, the whole composed by an
+orchestra capable of playing without break or
+interval.</p>
+
+<p>She insisted that the world was wicked, just as she
+insisted that it was miserable. She struggled hard to
+bring the light of salvation to Bindle, and she groaned
+in spirit at his obvious happiness, knowing that to be
+happy was to be damned.</p>
+
+<p>To her, a soul was what a scalp is to the American<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+Indian. She strove to collect them, knowing that the
+believer who went to salvation with the greatest
+number of saved souls dangling at her girdle, would be
+thrice welcome, and thrice blessed.</p>
+
+<p>In Bindle's case, however, she had to fall back upon
+the wheat that fell upon stony ground. With a
+cheerfulness that he made no effort to disguise, Bindle
+declined to be saved.</p>
+
+<p>"Look 'ere, Lizzie," he would say cheerily.
+"Two 'arps is quite enough for one family and, as
+you and 'Earty are sure of 'em, you leave me
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>One of Mrs. Bindle's principal complaints against
+Bindle was that he never took her out.</p>
+
+<p>"You could take me out fast enough once," she
+would complain.</p>
+
+<p>"But where'm I to take you?" cried Bindle. "You
+don't like the pictures, you won't go to the 'alls, and
+I can't stand that smelly little chapel of yours, listenin'
+to a cove wot tells you 'ow uncomfortable you're
+goin' to be when you're cold meat."</p>
+
+<p>"You could take me for a walk, couldn't you?"
+demanded Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"When I takes you round the 'ouses, you bully-rags
+me because I cheer-o's my pals, and if we passes a pub
+you makes pleasant little remarks about gin-palaces.
+Tell you wot it is, Mrs. B.," he remarked on one
+occasion, "you ain't good company, at least not in this
+world," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, go on," Mrs. Bindle would conclude.
+"Why did you marry me?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There, Mrs. B.," he would reply, "you 'ave me
+beaten."</p>
+
+<p>From the moment that Mrs. Bindle read of the Bishop
+of Fulham's Summer-Camps for Tired Workers, she
+became obsessed by the idea of a holiday in a summer-camp.
+She was one of the first to apply for the
+literature that was advertised as distributed free.</p>
+
+<p>The evening-paper that Bindle brought home
+possessed a new interest for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything about the summer-camps?" she would
+ask, interrupting Bindle in his study of the cricket
+and racing news, until at last he came to hate the very
+name of summer-camps and all they implied.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the worst o' religion," he grumbled one
+night at The Yellow Ostrich; "it comes a-buttin'
+into your 'ome life, an' then there ain't no
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't 'old wiv religion," growled Ginger.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't got nothink to say against religion <i>as</i> religion,"
+Bindle had remarked; "but I bars summer-camps."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle, however, was packing. With all the
+care of a practised housewife, she first devoted herself
+to the necessary cooking-utensils. She packed and
+unpacked half-a-dozen times a day, always stowing
+away some article that, a few minutes later, she found
+she required.</p>
+
+<p>Her conversation at meal-times was devoted exclusively
+to what they should take with them. She asked
+innumerable questions, none of which Bindle was able
+satisfactorily to answer. To him the bucolic life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+was a closed book; but he soon realised that a holiday
+at the Surrey Summer-Camp was inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot am I to do in a summer-camp?" he mumbled,
+one evening after supper. "I can drive an 'orse, if
+some one's leadin' it, an' I knows it's an 'en wot lays
+the eggs an' the cock wot makes an 'ell of a row in the
+mornin', same as them ole 'orrors we used to 'ave;
+but barrin' that, I'm done."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," broke in Mrs. Bindle, "try and spoil
+my pleasure, it's little enough I get."</p>
+
+<p>"But wot are we goin' to do in the country?"
+persisted Bindle with wrinkled forehead. "I don't
+like gardenin', an'&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pity you don't," she snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's a pity," he agreed; "still, it's saved me
+an 'ell of a lot o' back-aches. But wot are we goin'
+to do in a summer-camp, that's wot I want to
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be getting fresh air and&mdash;and you can watch
+the sunsets."</p>
+
+<p>"But the sun ain't goin' to set all day," he persisted.
+"Besides, I can see the sunset from Putney Bridge,
+an' damn good sunsets too, for them as likes 'em.
+There ain't no need to go to a summer-camp to see
+a sunset."</p>
+
+<p>"You can go on, you're not hurting me." Mrs.
+Bindle drew in her lips and sat looking straight in
+front of her, a grim figure of Christian patience.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't milk a cow," Bindle continued disconsolately,
+reviewing his limitations. "I can't catch chickens,
+me with various veins in my legs, I 'ates the smell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+o' pigs, an' I ain't good at weedin' gardens. Now I
+asks you, Mrs. B., wot use am I at a summer-camp?
+I'll only be a sort o' fly in the drippin'."</p>
+
+<p>"You can enjoy yourself, I suppose, can't you?"
+she snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"But 'ow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't talk to me. I'm sick and tired of your
+grumbling, with your don't like this, an' your don't like
+that. Pity you haven't something to grumble about."</p>
+
+<p>"But I ain't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There's many men would be glad to have a home
+like yours, an' chance it."</p>
+
+<p>"Naughty!" cried Bindle, wagging an admonitory
+finger at her. "If I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop it!" she cried, jumping up, and making a
+dash for the fire, which she proceeded to poke into
+extinction.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Bindle had stopped it, seizing the opportunity
+whilst Mrs. Bindle was engaged with the fire,
+to slip out to The Yellow Ostrich.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>"Looks a bit lonely, don't it?" Bindle gazed about
+him doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you expect in the country?" snapped
+Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a tram or a bus would make it look more
+'ome-like."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Bindles were standing on the down platform
+of Boxton Station surrounded by their luggage. There
+was a Japanese basket bursting to reveal its contents,
+a large cardboard hat-box, a small leather bag without
+a handle and tied round the middle with string to
+reinforce a dubious fastening. There was a string-bag
+blatantly confessing to its heterogeneous contents,
+and a roll of blankets, through the centre of which poked
+Mrs. Bindle's second-best umbrella, with a travesty
+of a parrot's head for a handle.</p>
+
+<p>There was a small deal box without a lid and marked
+"Tate's Sugar," and a frying-pan done up in newspaper,
+but still obviously a frying-pan. Finally there
+was a small tin-bath, full to overflowing, and covered
+by a faded maroon-coloured table-cover that had seen
+better days.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle looked down ruefully at the litter of
+possessions that formed an oasis on a desert of platform.</p>
+
+<p>"They ain't afraid of anythink 'appening 'ere," he
+remarked, as he looked about him. "Funny little 'ole,
+I calls it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was obviously troubled. She had
+been clearly told at the temporary offices of the Committee
+of the Summer-Camps for Tired Workers, that
+a cart met the train by which she and Bindle had
+travelled; yet nowhere was there a sign of life. Vainly
+in her own mind she strove to associate Bindle with the
+cause of their standing alone on a country railway-platform,
+surrounded by so uninviting a collection of
+luggage.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Presently an old man was observed leaving the distant
+signal-box and hobbling slowly towards them. When
+within a few yards of the Bindles, he halted and gazed
+doubtfully, first at them, then at the pile of their
+possessions. Finally he removed his cap of office as
+railway porter, and scratched his head dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I missed un that time," he said at length, as he
+replaced his cap.</p>
+
+<p>"Missed who?" enquired Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"The four-forty," replied the old man, stepping
+aside to get a better view of the luggage. "Got
+a-talkin' to Young Tom an' clean forgot un." It
+was clear that he regarded the episode in the light of
+a good joke. "Yours?" he queried a moment later,
+indicating with a jerk of his head the litter on the
+platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Got it first time, grandpa," said Bindle cheerfully.
+"We come to start a pawnshop in these parts," he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>The porter looked at Bindle with a puzzled expression,
+then his gaze wandered back to the luggage and
+finally on to Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"We've come to join the Summer-Camp," she
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>"The Summer-Camp!" repeated the man, "the
+Summer-Camp!" Then he suddenly broke into a
+breeze of chuckles. He looked from Mrs. Bindle to
+the luggage and from the luggage to Bindle, little gusts
+of throaty croaks eddying and flowing. Finally with a
+resounding smack he brought his hand down upon his
+fustian thigh.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm danged," he chuckled, "if that ain't
+a good un. I maun go an' tell Young Tom," and he
+turned preparatory to making off for the signal-box.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle, however, by a swift movement barred his
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's as funny as all that, ole sport, wot's the
+matter with tellin' us all about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Once more the old man stuttered off into a fugue of
+chuckles.</p>
+
+<p>"Young Tom'll laugh over this, 'e will," he gasped;
+"'e'll split 'isself."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they don't 'ave much to amuse 'em,"
+said Bindle patiently. "Now then, wot's it all
+about?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong station," spluttered the ancient. Then
+a moment later he added, "You be wantin' West
+Boxton. Camp's there. Three mile away. There
+ain't another train stoppin' here to-night," he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle looked at Bindle. Her lips had disappeared;
+but she said nothing. The arrangements
+had been entirely in her hands, and it was she who had
+purchased the tickets.</p>
+
+<p>"How far did you say it was?" she demanded of the
+porter in a tone that seemed, as if by magic, to dry up
+the fountain of his mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"Three mile, mum," he replied, making a shuffling
+movement in the direction of where Young Tom stood
+beside his levers, all unconscious of the splendid joke
+that had come to cheer his solitude. Mrs. Bindle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+however, placed herself directly in his path, grim and
+determined. The man fell back a pace, casting an
+appealing look at Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Where can we get a cart?" she demanded with
+the air of one who has taken an important decision.</p>
+
+<p>The porter scratched his head through his cap and
+considered deeply, then with a sudden flank movement
+and a muttered, "I'll ask Young Tom," he shuffled
+off in the direction of the signal-box.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle gazed dubiously at the pile of their possessions,
+and then at Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Three miles," he muttered. "You didn't ought
+to be trusted out with a young chap like me, Mrs. B.,"
+he said reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"That's enough, Bindle."</p>
+
+<p>Without another word she stalked resolutely along
+the platform in the direction of the signal-box. The
+old porter happening to glance over his shoulder saw
+her coming, and broke into a shambling trot, determined
+to obtain the moral support of Young Tom
+before another encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Drawing his pipe from his pocket, Bindle sank down
+upon the tin-bath, jumping up instantly, conscious that
+something had given way beneath him with a crack
+suggestive of broken crockery. Reseating himself
+upon the bundle of blankets, he proceeded to smoke
+contentedly. After all, something would happen, something
+always did.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty minutes elapsed before Mrs. Bindle returned
+with the announcement that the signalman had telegraphed
+to West Boxton for a cart.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said Bindle philosophically, "it's
+turnin' out an 'appy day; but I could do with a
+drink."</p>
+
+<p>An hour later a cart rumbled its noisy way up to
+the station, outside which stood the Bindles and their
+luggage. A business-like little boy scout slid off the
+tail.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to go to the Camp?" he asked
+briskly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," began Bindle, "I can't say that
+I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Bindle, seeing in the boy
+scout her St. George; "we got out at the wrong
+station." She looked across at Bindle as she spoke,
+as if to indicate where lay the responsibility for the
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" said the friend of all the world.
+"We'll soon get you there."</p>
+
+<p>"An' who might you be, young-fellow-my-lad?"
+enquired Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Patrol-leader Smithers of the Bear Patrol,"
+was the response.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Well, well,
+it's live an' learn, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now we'll get the luggage up," said Patrol-leader
+Smithers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow 'Aig an' Foch must miss you," remarked
+Bindle as between them they hoisted up the tin-bath;
+but the lad was too intent upon the work on hand for
+persiflage.</p>
+
+<p>A difficulty presented itself in how Mrs. Bindle was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+to get into the cart. Her intense sensitiveness, coupled
+with the knowledge that there would be four strange
+pairs of male eyes watching her, constituted a serious
+obstacle. Young Tom, in whom was nothing of the
+spirit of Jack Cornwell, and his friend the old porter
+made no effort to disguise the fact that they were determined
+to see the drama through to the last fade-out.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle's suggestion that he should "'oist" her up,
+Mrs. Bindle had ignored, and she flatly refused to climb
+the spokes of the wheel. The step in front was nearly
+a yard from the ground, and Mrs. Bindle resented
+Young Tom's sandy leer.</p>
+
+<p>It was Patrol-leader Smithers who eventually
+solved the problem by suggesting a dandy-chair, to
+which Mrs. Bindle reluctantly agreed. Accordingly
+Bindle and the porter crossed arms and clasped one
+another's wrists.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle took up a position with her back to the
+tail of the cart, and the two Sir Walters bent down,
+whilst Patrol-leader Smithers turned his back and,
+with great delicacy, strove to engage the fixed eye of
+Young Tom; but without success.</p>
+
+<p>"Now when I says 'eave&mdash;'eave," Bindle admonished
+the porter.</p>
+
+<p>Gingerly Mrs. Bindle sat down upon their crossed
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"One, two, three&mdash;'eave!" cried Bindle, and they
+heaved.</p>
+
+<p>There was a loud guffaw from Young Tom, a stifled
+scream, and Mrs. Bindle was safely in the cart; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+on her back, with the soles of her elastic-sided boots
+pointing to heaven. Bindle had under-estimated the
+thews of the porter.</p>
+
+<p>"Right away!" cried Patrol-leader Smithers, feeling
+that prompt action alone could terminate so regrettable
+an incident, and he and Bindle clambered up
+into the cart, where Mrs. Bindle, having regained
+control of her movements, was angrily tucking her
+skirts about her.</p>
+
+<p>The cart jerked forward, and Young Tom and his
+colleague grinned their valedictions, in their hearts
+the knowledge that they had just lived a crowded hour
+of glorious life.</p>
+
+<p>The cart jolted its uneasy way along the dusty high-road,
+with Bindle beside the driver, Mrs. Bindle sitting
+on the blankets as grim as Destiny itself, engaged
+in working up a case against Bindle, and the boy
+scout watchful and silent, as behoves the leader of an
+enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle soon discovered that conversationally the
+carter was limited to the "Aye" of agreement, varied
+in moments of unwonted enthusiasm with an "Oh,
+aye!"</p>
+
+<p>At the end of half an hour's jolt, squeak, and crunch,
+the cart turned into a lane overhung by giant
+elms, where the sun-dried ruts were like miniature
+trenches.</p>
+
+<p>"Better hold on," counselled the lad, as he made
+a clutch at the Japanese basket, which was in
+danger of going overboard. "It's a bit bumpy
+here."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Fancy place in wet weather," murmured Bindle,
+as he held on with both hands. "So this is the Surrey
+Summer-Camp for Tired Workers," and he gazed
+about him curiously.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SUMMER CAMP FOR TIRED WORKERS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers
+had been planned by the Bishop of Fulham
+out of the largeness of his heart and the
+plenitude of his inexperience in such undertakings.
+He had borrowed a meadow, acquired a cow, hired
+a marquee, and wangled fifty army bell-tents and a
+field-kitchen, about which in all probability questions
+would be asked in the House. Finally as the result
+of a brain-wave he had requisitioned the local boy
+scouts. Later there would be the devil to pay with
+the leaders of the Boys' Brigade; but the bishop
+abounded in tact.</p>
+
+<p>When the time came, the meadow was there, the
+bell-tents, the cow, and the boy scouts duly arrived;
+but of the marquee nothing had been seen or heard,
+and as for the field-kitchen, the War Office could
+say little beyond the fact that it had left Aldershot.</p>
+
+<p>For days the bishop worked indefatigably with
+telephone and telegraph, endeavouring to trace the
+errant field-kitchen and the missing marquee; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+so much of his time had been occupied in obtaining
+the necessary assistance to ensure that the cow was
+properly and punctually milked, that other things,
+being farther away, had seemed less insistent.</p>
+
+<p>In those days the bishop had much to worry him;
+but his real cross was Daisy, the cow. Everything
+else was of minor importance compared with this
+bovine responsibility. Vaguely he had felt that
+if you had a cow you had milk; but he was to discover
+that on occasion a cow could be as unproductive of
+milk as a sea-serpent.</p>
+
+<p>None of the campers had ever approached a cow
+in her professional capacity. Night and morning
+she had to be relieved of a twelve hours' accumulation
+of milk, all knew that; but how? That was a question
+which had perturbed bishop and campers alike;
+for the whole camp shared the ecclesiastical anxiety
+about Daisy. Somewhere at the back of the cockney
+mind was the suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty,
+that, unless regularly milked, cows exploded,
+like overcharged water-mains.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy soon developed into something more than
+a cow. When other occupations failed (amusements
+there were none), the campers would collect round
+Daisy, examining her from every angle. She was a
+mystery, just as a juggler or the three-card trick
+were mysteries, and as such she commanded
+respect.</p>
+
+<p>Each night and morning the bishop had to produce
+from somewhere a person capable of ministering to the
+requirements of Daisy, and everyone in the neighbour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>hood
+was extremely busy. Apart from this, West
+Boxton was a hot-bed of Nonconformity, and some of
+the inhabitants were much exercised in their minds as
+to the spiritual effect upon a Dissenter of milking a
+church cow.</p>
+
+<p>There were times when the bishop felt like a conjurer,
+billed to produce a guinea-pig from a top-hat, who had
+left the guinea-pig at home.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy was not without her uses, quite apart from
+those for which she had been provided by Providence
+and the bishop. "Come an' 'ave a look at Daisy,"
+had become the conversational forlorn hope of the
+campers when utterly bankrupt of all other interests.
+She was their shield against boredom and the spear
+with which to slay the dragon of apathy.</p>
+
+<p>"No beer, no pictures, only a ruddy cow," a cynic
+had remarked in summing up the amusements provided
+by the Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers.
+"Enough to give a giddy flea the blinkin' 'ump,"
+he had concluded; but his was only an isolated view.
+For the most part these shipwrecked cockneys were
+grateful to Daisy, and they never tired of watching
+the milk spurt musically into the bright pail beneath
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop was well-meaning, but forgetful. In
+planning his camp he had entirely overlooked the
+difficulty of food and water supplies. The one was a
+mile distant and could not be brought nearer; the
+other had been overcome by laying a pipe, at considerable
+expense.</p>
+
+<p>In the natural order of disaster the campers had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+arrived, and in a very few hours became tinctured with
+the heresy of anti-clericalism. Husbands quarrelled
+with wives as to who should bear the responsibility
+for the adventure to which they found themselves
+committed. One and all questioned the right of a
+bishop to precipitate himself into the domestic circle
+as a bearer of discord and summer-camps.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the arrival of the Bindles, everything
+seemed chaos. There was a spatter of bell-tents on the
+face of the meadow, piles of personal possessions at
+the entrance of the tents, whilst the "tired workers"
+loitered about in their shirt sleeves, or strove to prepare
+meals in spite of the handicaps with which they were
+surrounded. The children stood about wide-eyed and
+grave, as if unable to play their urban games in a
+bucolic setting.</p>
+
+<p>When, under the able command of Patrol-leader
+Smithers, the Bindles' belongings had been piled up
+just inside the meadow and Mrs. Bindle helped down,
+sore in body and disturbed in temper, the indefatigable
+boy scout led the way towards a tent. He carried the
+Japanese basket in one hand, and the handleless bag
+under the other arm, whilst Bindle followed with the
+tin-bath, and Mrs. Bindle made herself responsible for
+the bundle of blankets, through the centre of which
+the parrot-headed umbrella peeped out coyly.</p>
+
+<p>Their guide paused at the entrance of a bell-tent,
+and deposited the Japanese basket on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"This is your tent," he announced, "I'll send one
+of the patrol to help you," and, with the air of one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+upon whose shoulders rests the destiny of planets, he
+departed.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle and Mrs. Bindle gazed after him, then at
+each other, finally at the tent. Bindle stepped
+across and put his head inside; but quickly withdrew
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Smells like a bus on a wet day," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>With an air of decision Mrs. Bindle entered the tent.
+As she did so Bindle winked gravely at a little boy who
+had wandered up, and now stood awaiting events with
+blue-eyed gravity. At Bindle's wink he turned and
+trotted off to a neighbouring tent, from the shelter of
+which he continued to watch the domestic tragedy of
+the new arrivals.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no bedsteads." Mrs. Bindle's voice
+came from within the tent in tones of muffled
+tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so," said Bindle abstractedly, his
+attention concentrated upon a diminutive knight of
+the pole, who was approaching their tent.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the feather beds, 'Orace?" he demanded
+when the lad was within ear-shot.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a waterproof ground-sheet and we
+supply mattresses of loose straw," he announced as
+he halted sharply within two paces of where Bindle
+stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you do, do you?" said Bindle, "an' who
+'appens to supply the brass double-bedstead wot me
+and Mrs. B. is used to sleep on. P'raps you can tell
+me that, young shaver?"</p>
+
+<p>Before the lad had time to reply, Mrs. Bindle appeared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+at the entrance of the tent, grimmer and more uncompromising
+than ever. For a moment she eyed the lad
+severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I to sleep?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you with this gentleman?" enquired the boy
+scout.</p>
+
+<p>"She is, sonny," said Bindle, "been with me for
+twenty years now. Can't lose 'er no'ow."</p>
+
+<p>"Bindle, behave yourself!" Mrs. Bindle's jaws
+closed with a snap.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to 'ave some sacks of straw in place
+of that missionary's bed you an' me sleeps on in
+Fulham," explained Bindle; but Mrs. Bindle had
+disappeared once more into the tent.</p>
+
+<p>For the next hour the Bindles and their assistant
+scout were engaged in getting the bell-tent into
+habitable condition. During the process the scout
+explained that the marquee was to have been used for
+the communal meals, which the field-kitchen was to
+supply; but both had failed to arrive, and the
+bishop had himself gone up to London to make
+enquiries.</p>
+
+<p>"An' wot's goin' to 'appen to us till 'e runs acrost
+'em?" enquired Bindle. "I'm feelin' a bit peckish
+myself now&mdash;wot I'll be like in a hour's time I don't
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you how to build a scout-fire," volunteered
+the lad.</p>
+
+<p>"But I ain't a fire-eater," objected Bindle. "I
+want a bit o' steak, or a rasher an' an egg."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use of a scout-fire to me with kippers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+to cook?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, appearing once
+more at the entrance of the tent.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment another "tired worker" drifted
+across to the Bindles' tent. He was a long, lean
+man with a straggling moustache and three days'
+growth of beard. He was in his shirt sleeves, collarless,
+with unbuttoned waistcoat, and he wore a general air
+of despondency and gloom.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow goes it, mate?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle straightened himself from inspecting the
+interior of the tin-bath which he was unpacking.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! mid; but I've known wot it is to be 'appier,"
+said Bindle, with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>"Same 'ere," was the gloomy response.</p>
+
+<p>"Things sort o' seem to 'ave gone wrong," suggested
+Bindle conversationally.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said the man, rubbing the bristles
+of his chin with a meditative thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow you gettin' on for grub?" asked Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head lugubriously.</p>
+
+<p>"What about a pub?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mile away," gloomed the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Gawd Almighty!" Bindle's exclamation was not
+concerned with the man's remark, but with something
+he extracted from the bath. "Well, I'm blowed," he
+muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, Lizzie," he called out.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent.
+Bindle held up an elastic-sided boot from which
+marmalade fell solemnly and reluctantly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the flood-gates of Mrs. Bindle's wrath burst
+apart, and she poured down upon Bindle's head a deluge
+of reproach. He and he alone was responsible for all
+the disasters that had befallen them. He had done
+it on purpose because she wanted a holiday. He
+wasn't a husband, he was a blasphemer, an atheist, a
+cumberer of the earth, and all that was evil.</p>
+
+<p>She was interrupted in her tirade by the approach of a
+little man with a round, bald, shiny head and a worried
+expression of countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"D'yer know 'ow to milk a cow, mate?" he enquired
+of Bindle, apparently quite unconscious that he had
+precipitated himself into the midst of a domestic
+scene.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I know 'ow to wot?" demanded Bindle,
+eyeing the man as if he had asked a most
+unusual question.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a bloomin' cow over there and nobody
+can't milk 'er, an' the bishop's gone, and we wants
+our tea."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle scratched his head through his cap, then,
+turning towards the tent into which Mrs. Bindle had
+once more disappeared, he called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, Lizzie, jer know 'ow to milk a cow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be beastly," came the reply from the
+tent.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't one of them cows," he called back,
+"it's a milk cow, an' 'ere's a cove wot wants 'is
+tea."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent,
+and surveyed the group of three men.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How did you manage yesterday?" she demanded
+practically.</p>
+
+<p>"A girl come over from the farm, missis," said
+the little man, "and she didn't 'arf make it
+milk."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue," snapped Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>The man gazed at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you get the same girl?" asked Mrs.
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"She says she's too busy. I 'ad a try myself,"
+said the man, "only it was a washout."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll 'ave a look at 'er," Bindle announced, and the
+three men moved off across the meadow, picking their
+way among the tents with their piles of bedding,
+blankets, and other impedimenta outside. All were
+getting ready for the night.</p>
+
+<p>When Bindle reached Daisy, he found the problem
+had been solved by one of Mr. Timkins' farm-hands,
+who was busily at work, watched by an interested
+group of campers.</p>
+
+<p>During the next half-hour, Bindle strolled about
+among the tents learning many things, foremost
+among which was that "the whole ruddy camp was a
+washout." The commissariat had failed badly, and
+the nearest drink was a mile away at The Trowel
+and Turtle. A great many things were said about the
+bishop and the organisers of the camp.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to the tent, he found Mrs. Bindle
+engaged in boiling water in a petrol-tin over a scout-fire.
+With the providence of a good housewife she
+had brought with her emergency supplies, and Bindle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+was soon enjoying a meal comprised of kipper, tea
+and bread and margarine. When he had finished,
+he announced himself ready to face the terrors of
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say as I likes it," he remarked, as he stood
+at the entrance to the tent, struggling to undo his
+collar. "Seems to me sort o' draughty."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, go on," cried Mrs. Bindle, as she
+pushed past him. "What did you expect?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, since you asks me, I'm like those coves in
+religion wot expects nothink; but gets an 'ell of a
+lot."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't blaspheme. It's Sunday to-morrow," was
+the rejoinder; but Bindle had strolled away to commune
+with the man with a stubbly chin and pessimistic
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Do yer sleep well, mate?" he enquired, conversationally.</p>
+
+<p>"Crikey! sleep is it? There ain't no blinkin' sleep
+in this 'ere ruddy camp."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's up?" enquired Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Up!" was the lugubrious response. "Awake all
+last night, I was."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot was you doin'?" queried Bindle with
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Scratchin'!" was the savage retort.</p>
+
+<p>"Scratchin'! Who was you scratchin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who was I scratchin'? Who the 'ell should I be
+scratchin' but myself?" he demanded, his apathy
+momentarily falling from him. "I'd like to know
+where they got that blinkin' straw from wot they give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+us to lie on. I done a bit o' scratchin' in the trenches;
+but last night I 'adn't enough fingers, damn
+'em."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle whistled.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," continued the man with gloomy gusto,
+"there's them ruddy chickens in the mornin', a-crowin'
+their guts out. Not a wink o' sleep after three for
+anybody," he added, with all the hatred of the
+cockney for farmyard sounds. "Oh! it's an 'oliday,
+all right," he added with scathing sarcasm, "only
+it ain't ours."</p>
+
+<p>"Seems like it," said Bindle drily, as he turned on
+his heel and made for his own tent.</p>
+
+<p>That night, he realised to the full the iniquities of
+the man who had supplied the straw for the mattresses.
+By the sounds that came from the other side of the
+tent-pole, he gathered that Mrs. Bindle was similarly
+troubled.</p>
+
+<p>Towards dawn, Bindle began to doze, just as the
+cocks were announcing the coming of the sun. If the
+man with the stubbly chin were right in his diagnosis,
+the birds, like Prometheus, had, during the night,
+renewed their missing organisms.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle. "Ole
+six-foot-o'-melancholy wasn't swinging the lead
+neither. 'Oly ointment! I never 'eard such a row
+in all my puff. There ain't no doubt but wot Mrs.
+Bindle's gettin' a country 'oliday," and with that he
+rose and proceeded to draw on his trousers, deciding
+that it was folly to attempt further to seek
+sleep.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Outside the tent, he came across Patrol-leader
+Smithers.</p>
+
+<p>"Mornin' Foch," said Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Smithers," said the lad. "Patrol-leader Smithers
+of the Bear Patrol."</p>
+
+<p>"My mistake," said Bindle; "but you an' Foch is
+jest as like as two peas. You don't 'appen to 'ave
+seen a stray cock about, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"A cock," repeated the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" said Bindle, tilting his head on one side
+with the air of one listening intently, whilst from all
+sides came the brazen blare of ecstatic chanticleers.
+"I thought I 'eard one just now."</p>
+
+<p>"They're Farmer Timkins' fowls," said Patrol-leader
+Smithers gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Seem to
+be in good song this mornin'. Reg'lar bunch o'
+canaries."</p>
+
+<p>To this flippancy, Patrol-leader Smithers made no
+response.</p>
+
+<p>"Does there 'appen to be any place where I can get a
+rinse, 'Indenberg?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a tap over there for men," said Patrol-leader
+Smithers, pointing to the extreme right of the
+field, "and for ladies over there," he pointed in the
+opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>"No mixed bathin', I see," murmured Bindle.
+"Now, as man to man, Ludendorff, which would you
+advise?"</p>
+
+<p>The lad looked at him with grave eyes. "The men's
+tap is over there," and again he pointed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said Bindle, "p'raps you're right;
+but I ain't fond o' takin' a bath in the middle of a
+field," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"The taps are screened off."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, live an' learn," muttered Bindle, as he
+made for the men's tap.</p>
+
+<p>When Bindle returned to the tent, he found Patrol-leader
+Smithers instructing Mrs. Bindle in how to coax
+a scout-fire into activity.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't poke it, mum," said the lad. "It
+goes out if you do."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips, and folded the brown
+mackintosh she was wearing more closely about her.
+She was not accustomed to criticism, particularly in
+domestic matters, and her instinct was to disregard
+it; but the boy's earnestness seemed to discourage
+retort, and she had already seen the evil effect of
+attacking a scout-fire with a poker.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her eye fell upon Bindle, standing in shirt
+and trousers, from the back of which his braces dangled
+despondently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go in and dress?" she demanded.
+"Walking about in that state!"</p>
+
+<p>"I been to get a rinse," he explained, as he walked
+across to the tent and disappeared through the
+aperture.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle snorted angrily. She had experienced
+a bad night, added to which the fire had resented her
+onslaught by incontinently going out, necessitating an
+appeal to a mere child.</p>
+
+<p>Having assumed a collar, a coat and waistcoat,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+Bindle strolled round the camp exchanging a word
+here and a word there with his fellow campers, who, in
+an atmosphere of intense profanity, were engaged in
+getting breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Never 'eard such language," muttered Bindle with
+a grin. "This 'ere little camp'll send a rare lot
+o' people to a place where they won't meet the
+bishop."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of half-an-hour he returned and found
+tea, eggs and bacon, and Mrs. Bindle waiting for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"So you've come at last," she snapped, as he seated
+himself on a wooden box.</p>
+
+<p>"Got it this time," he replied genially, sniffing the
+air appreciatively. "'Ope you got somethink nice
+for yer little love-bird."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you love-bird me," cried Mrs. Bindle, who
+had been looking for some one on whom to vent her
+displeasure. "I suppose you're going to leave me to
+do all the work while you go gallivanting about playing
+the gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't needs to play it, Mrs. B., I'm IT.
+Vere de Vere with blood as blue as 'Earty's
+stories."</p>
+
+<p>"If you think I'm going to moil and toil and cook
+for you down here as I do at home, you're mistaken.
+I came for a rest. I've hardly had a wink of sleep
+all night," she sniffed ominously.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I 'eard you on the 'unt," said Bindle
+sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Bindle!" There was warning in her tone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But wasn't you?" He looked across at her in
+surprise, his mouth full of eggs and bacon.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I had a disturbed night," she drew in her lips
+primly.</p>
+
+<p>"So did I," said Bindle gloomily. "I'd 'ave
+disturbed 'em if I could 'ave caught 'em. My God!
+There must 'ave been millions of 'em," he added
+reminiscently.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're going to talk like that, I shall go away,"
+she announced.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to meet the cove wot filled them mattresses,"
+was Bindle's sinister comment.</p>
+
+<p>"It&mdash;it wasn't that," said Mrs. Bindle. "It was
+the&mdash;&mdash;" She paused for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Them cocks," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting, Bindle."</p>
+
+<p>"Disgusting? I never see such a chap as me for
+bein' lood an' disgustin' an' blasphemious. Wot jer
+call 'em if they ain't cocks?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're roosters&mdash;the male birds."</p>
+
+<p>"But they wasn't roostin', blow 'em. They was
+crowin', like giddy-o."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle made no comment; but continued to
+eat her breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Personally, myself, I'm goin' to 'ave a little word
+with the bishop about that little game I 'ad with
+wot 'appened before wot you call them male birds
+started givin' tongue." He paused to take breath.
+"I don't like to mention wot it was; but I shall itch
+for a month. 'Ullo Weary!" he called out to the
+long man with the stubbly chin.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man approached. He was wearing the same
+lugubrious look and the same waistcoat, unbuttoned
+in just the same manner that it had been unbuttoned
+the day before.</p>
+
+<p>"You was right about them mattresses and the
+male birds," said Bindle, with a glance at Mrs.
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"The wot?" demanded the man, gazing vacantly
+at Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"The male birds."</p>
+
+<p>"'Oo the 'ell&mdash;sorry, mum," to Mrs. Bindle. Then
+turning once more to Bindle he added, "Them cocks,
+you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Ush!" said Bindle. "They ain't cocks 'ere, they're
+male birds, an' roosters on Sunday. You see, my
+missis&mdash;&mdash;" but Mrs. Bindle had risen and, with angry
+eyes, had disappeared into the tent.</p>
+
+<p>"Got one of 'em?" queried Bindle, jerking his
+thumb in the direction of the aperture of the
+tent.</p>
+
+<p>The man with the stubbly chin nodded dolefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought so," said Bindle. "You looks it."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Bindle was strolling round the camp with
+the man with the stubbly chin, Mrs. Bindle was
+becoming better acquainted with the peculiar temperament
+of a bell-tent. She had already realised its
+disadvantages as a dressing-room. It was dark, it was
+small, it was stuffy. The two mattresses occupied
+practically the whole floor-space and there was nowhere
+to sit. It was impossible to move about freely,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+owing to the restrictions of space in the upper
+area.</p>
+
+<p>Having washed the breakfast-things, peeled the
+potatoes, supplied by Mr. Timkins through Patrol-leader
+Smithers, and prepared for the oven a small
+joint of beef she had brought with her, Mrs. Bindle
+once more withdrew into the tent.</p>
+
+<p>When she eventually re-appeared in brown alpaca
+with a bonnet to match, upon which rested two
+purple pansies, Bindle had just returned from what he
+called "a nose round," during which he had made
+friends with most of the campers, men, women and
+children, who were not already his friends.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of Mrs. Bindle he whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p>"You can show me where the bakers is," she said
+icily, as she proceeded to draw on a pair of brown
+kid gloves. The inconveniences arising from dressing
+in a bell-tent had sorely ruffled her temper.</p>
+
+<p>"The bakers!" he repeated stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the bakers," she repeated. "I suppose you
+don't want to eat your dinner raw."</p>
+
+<p>Then Bindle strove to explain the composite tragedy
+of the missing field-kitchen and marquee, to say
+nothing of the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>In small communities news travels quickly, and the
+Bindles soon found themselves the centre of a group of
+men and women (with children holding a watching
+brief), all anxious to volunteer information, mainly on
+the subject of misguided bishops who got unsuspecting
+townsmen into the country under false pretences.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was a good housewife, and she had come
+prepared with rations sufficient for the first two days.
+She had, however, depended upon the statements
+contained in the prospectus of the S.C.T.W., that
+cooking facilities would be provided by the committee.</p>
+
+<p>She strove to control the anger that was rising
+within her. It was the Sabbath, and she was among
+strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Although ready and willing to volunteer information,
+the other campers saw no reason to restrain
+their surprise and disapproval of Mrs. Bindle's toilette.
+The other women were in their work-a-day attire, as
+befitted housewives who had dinners to cook under
+severe handicaps, and they resented what they regarded
+as a newcomer's "swank."</p>
+
+<p>That first day of the holiday, for which she had
+fought with such grim determination, lived long in
+Mrs. Bindle's memory. Dinner she contrived with the
+aid of the frying-pan and the saucepan she had brought
+with her. It would have taken something more than
+the absence of a field-kitchen to prevent Mrs. Bindle
+from doing what she regarded as her domestic duty.</p>
+
+<p>The full sense of her tragedy, however, manifested
+itself when, dinner over, she had washed-up.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to do until tea-time. Bindle had
+disappeared with the man with the stubbly chin and
+two others in search of the nearest public-house, a mile
+away. Patrol-leader Smithers was at Sunday-school,
+whilst her fellow-campers showed no inclination to
+make advances.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She walked for a little among the other tents; but
+her general demeanour was not conducive to hasty
+friendships. She therefore returned to the tent and
+wrote to Mr. Hearty, telling him, on the authority
+of Patrol-leader Smithers, that Mr. Timkins had a
+large quantity of excellent strawberries for sale.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty was a greengrocer who had one eye on
+business and the other eye on God, in case of accidents.
+On hearing that the Bindles were going into the
+country, his mind had instinctively flown to fruit and
+vegetables. He had asked Mrs. Bindle to "drop him
+a postcard" (Mr. Hearty was always economical in the
+matter of postages, even other people's postages) if
+she heard of anything that she thought might interest
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle told in glowing terms the story of
+Farmer Timkins' hoards of strawberries, giving the
+impression that he was at a loss what to do with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Three o'clock brought the bishop and a short open-air
+service, which was attended by the entire band
+of campers, with the exception of Bindle and his
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop was full of apologies for the past and
+hope for the future. In place of a sermon he gave an
+almost jovial address; but there were no answering
+smiles. Everyone was wondering what they could do
+until it was time for bed, the more imaginative going
+still further and speculating what they were to do when
+they got there.</p>
+
+<p>"My friends," the bishop concluded, "we must not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+allow trifling mishaps to discourage us. We are here
+to enjoy ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>And the campers returned to their tents as Achilles
+had done a few thousand years before, dark of brow
+and gloomy of heart.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>MR. HEARTY ENCOUNTERS A BULL</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"He's sure to lose his way across the fields,"
+cried Mrs. Bindle angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"'Earty's too careful to lose anythink,"
+said Bindle, as, from a small tin box, he crammed
+tobacco into his pipe. "'E's used to the narrow way
+'e is," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have gone to meet him."</p>
+
+<p>"My legs is feelin' a bit tired&mdash;&mdash;" began Bindle, who
+enjoyed his brother-in-law's society only when there
+were others to enjoy it with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Bother your legs," she snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Supposin' you 'ad various veins in your legs."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be nasty."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, wot jer want to talk about my legs for, if I
+mustn't talk about yours," he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got a lewd mind, Bindle," she retorted,
+"and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, any'ow, I ain't got lood legs."</p>
+
+<p>She drew in her lips; but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know wot 'Earty wants to come down to a
+funny little 'ole like this for," grumbled Bindle, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+they walked across the meadow adjoining the camping-ground,
+making for a spot that would give them a view
+of the field-path leading to the station.</p>
+
+<p>"It's because he wants to buy some fruit."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought there was somethink at the back of the
+old bird's mind," he remarked. "'Earty ain't one
+to spend railway fares jest for the love o' seein' you
+an' me, Mrs. B. It's apples 'es after&mdash;reg'lar old Adam
+'e is. You only got to watch 'im with them gals in
+the choir."</p>
+
+<p>"If you talk like that I shall leave you," she cried
+angrily; "and it's strawberries, apples aren't in yet,"
+she added, as if that were a circumstance in Mr. Hearty's
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty had proved himself to be a man of action.
+Mrs. Bindle's glowing account of vast stores of strawberries,
+to be had almost for the asking, had torn from
+him a telegram announcing that he would be at the
+Summer-Camp for Tired Workers soon after two
+o'clock that, Monday, afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was almost genial at the prospect of
+seeing her brother-in-law, and earning his thanks for
+assistance rendered. Conditions at the camp remained
+unchanged. After the service on the previous day,
+the bishop had once more disappeared, ostensibly in
+pursuit of the errant field-kitchen and marquee, promising
+to return early the following afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the gate on the further side of the field,
+Bindle paused. Then, as Mrs. Bindle refused his
+suggestion that he should "'oist" her up, he himself
+climbed on to the top-rail and sat contentedly smoking.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't seem to see 'Earty a-walkin' across a field,"
+he remarked meditatively. "It don't seem natural."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't see anything but what's in your own
+wicked mind," she retorted acidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!" he said philosophically. "P'raps
+you're right. I suppose we shall see them merry
+whiskers of 'is a-comin' round the corner, 'im a-leadin'
+a lamb with a pink ribbon. I can see 'Earty with a
+little lamb, an' a sprig o' mint for the sauce."</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a quarter of an hour Bindle smoked in
+silence, whilst Mrs. Bindle stood with eyes fixed upon a
+stile on the opposite side of the field, over which Mr.
+Hearty was due to come.</p>
+
+<p>"What was that?"</p>
+
+<p>Involuntarily she clutched Bindle's knee, as a
+tremendous roar broke the stillness of the summer
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"That's ole Farmer Timkins' bull," explained Bindle.
+"Rare ole sport, 'e is. Tossed a cove last week, an'
+made a rare mess of 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"It oughtn't to be allowed."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dangerous animals like that," was the retort.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, personally myself, I likes a cut o' veal,"
+Bindle remarked, watching Mrs. Bindle covertly; but
+her thoughts were intent on Mr. Hearty, and the allusion
+passed unnoticed.</p>
+
+<p>"It 'ud be a bad thing for ole 'Earty, if that bull
+was to get 'im by the back o' the trousers," mused
+Bindle. "'Ullo, there 'e is." He indicated with the
+stem of his pipe a point in the hedge on the right of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+the field, over which was thrust a great dun-coloured
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Again the terrifying roar split the air. Instinctively
+Mrs. Bindle recoiled, and gripped the parrot-headed
+umbrella she was carrying.</p>
+
+<p>"It's trying to get through. I'm not going to wait
+here," she announced with decision. "It may&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry, Mrs. B.," he reassured her. "'E
+ain't one o' the jumpin' sort. Besides, there's an
+'edge between 'im an' us, not to speak o' this 'ere
+gate."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle retired a yard or two, her eyes still on
+the dun-coloured head.</p>
+
+<p>So absorbed were she and Bindle in watching the
+bull, that neither of them saw Mr. Hearty climbing
+the opposite stile.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood on the topmost step, silhouetted against
+the blue sky, the tails of his frock-coat flapping, Bindle
+caught sight of him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo, 'ere's old 'Earty!" he cried, waving his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty descended gingerly to terra firma, then,
+seeing Mrs. Bindle, he raised his semi-clerical felt hat.
+In such matters, Mr. Hearty was extremely punctilious.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the bull appeared to catch sight of
+the figure with the flapping coat-tails.</p>
+
+<p>It made a tremendous onslaught upon the hedge, and
+there was a sound of crackling branches; but the
+hedge held.</p>
+
+<p>"Call out to him, Bindle. Shout! Warn him! Do
+you hear?" cried Mrs. Bindle excitedly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'E's all right," said Bindle complacently. "That
+there bull ain't a-goin' to get through an 'edge like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hearty, there's a bull! Run!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's thin voice entirely failed to carry to
+where Mr. Hearty was walking with dignity and
+unconcern, regardless of the danger which Mrs. Bindle
+foresaw threatened him.</p>
+
+<p>The bull made another attack upon the hedge. Mr.
+Hearty's flapping coat-tails seemed to goad it to madness.
+There was a further crackling and the massive
+shoulders of the animal now became visible; but still
+it was unable to break through.</p>
+
+<p>"Call out to him, Bindle. He'll be killed, and it'll
+be your fault," she cried hysterically, pale and trembling
+with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, 'Earty!" yelled Bindle. "There's a
+bloomin' bull," and he pointed in the direction of the
+hedge; but the bull had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty looked towards the point indicated;
+but, seeing nothing, continued his dignified way,
+convinced that Bindle was once more indulging in
+what Mr. Hearty had been known to describe as "his
+untimely jests."</p>
+
+<p>He was within some fifty yards of the gate where
+the Bindles awaited him, when there was a terrific
+crash followed by a mighty roar&mdash;the bull was through.
+It had retreated apparently in order to charge the
+hedge and break through by virtue of its mighty
+bulk.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle yelled, Mrs. Bindle screamed, and Mr. Hearty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+gave one wild look over his shoulder and, with terror
+in his eyes and his semi-clerical hat streaming behind,
+attached only by a hat-guard, he ran as he had never
+run before.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle clambered down from the gate so as to leave
+the way clear, and Mrs. Bindle thrust her umbrella
+into Bindle's hands. She had always been told that
+no bull would charge an open umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, 'Earty!" yelled Bindle. "Run like
+'ell!" In his excitement he squatted down on his
+haunches, for all the world like a man encouraging a
+whippet.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty ran, and the bull, head down and with
+a snorting noise that struck terror to the heart of the
+fugitive, ran also.</p>
+
+<p>"Run, Mr. Hearty, run!" screamed Mrs. Bindle
+again.</p>
+
+<p>The bull was running diagonally in the direction of
+Mr. Hearty's fleeing figure. In this it was at a disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>"Get ready to help him over," cried Mrs. Bindle,
+terror clutching at her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks to me as if 'Earty and the bull and the whole
+bloomin' caboodle'll come over together," muttered
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oooooh!"</p>
+
+<p>A new possibility seemed to strike Mrs. Bindle and,
+with a terrified look at the approaching bull, which at
+that moment gave utterance to a super-roar, she
+turned and fled for the gate on the opposite side of the
+field.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For a second Bindle tore his gaze from the drama
+before him. He caught sight of several inches of white
+leg above a pair of elastic-sided boots, out of which
+dangled black and orange tabs.</p>
+
+<p>"Help, Joseph, help!" Mr. Hearty screamed in
+his terror and, a second later, he crashed against the
+gate on which Bindle had climbed ready to haul him
+over.</p>
+
+<p>Seizing his brother-in-law by the collar and a mercifully
+slack pair of trousers, he gave him a mighty
+heave. A moment later, the two fell to the ground;
+but on the right side of the gate. As they did so, the
+bull crashed his head against it.</p>
+
+<p>The whole structure shivered. For a moment Bindle
+gave himself up for lost; but, fortunately, the posts
+held. The enraged animal could do nothing more than
+thrust its muzzle between the bars of the gate and snort
+its fury.</p>
+
+<p>The foaming mouth and evil-looking blood-shot
+eyes caused Bindle to scramble hastily to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh God! I am a miserable sinner," wailed Mr.
+Hearty; "but spare me that I may repent." Then
+he fell to moaning, whilst Bindle caught a vision of
+Mrs. Bindle disappearing over the further gate with a
+startling exposure of white stocking.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "Ain't it funny
+'ow religion gets into the legs when there's a bull
+about? Bit of a slump in 'arps, if you was to ask
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>For some seconds he stood gazing down on the
+grovelling form of Mr. Hearty, an anxious eye on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+bull which, with angry snorts, was battering the gate
+in a manner that caused him some concern.</p>
+
+<p>"Look 'ere, 'Earty, you'd better nip orf," he said
+at length, bringing his boot gently into contact with a
+prominent portion of the greengrocer's prostrate form.
+Mr. Hearty merely groaned and muttered appeals to
+the Almighty to save him.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't no use a-kickin' up all that row," Bindle
+continued. "This 'ere bit o' beef seems to 'ave taken
+a fancy to you, 'Earty, an' that there gate ain't none
+too strong, neither. 'Ere, steady Kayser," he admonished,
+as the bull made a vicious dash with its
+head against the gate.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty sat up and gave a wild look about him.
+At the sight of the blood-shot eyes of the enraged animal
+he scrambled to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you make a bolt for that there stile," said
+Bindle, jerking his thumb in the direction where Mrs.
+Bindle had just disappeared, "and you'll find Mrs. B.
+somewhere on the other side."</p>
+
+<p>With another apprehensive glance at the bull, Mr.
+Hearty turned and made towards the stile. His pace
+was strangely suggestive of a man cheating in a walking-race.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of his quarry escaping seemed still further
+to enrage the bull. With a terrifying roar it dashed
+furiously at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of the roar lent wings to the feet of the
+flying Mr. Hearty. Throwing aside all pretence, he
+made precipitately towards the stile, beyond which
+lay safety. For a few seconds, Bindle stood watching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+the flying figure of his brother-in-law. Then he turned
+off to the right, along the hedge dividing the meadow
+from the field occupied by the bull.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, 'ere's victory or Westminster Abbey," he
+muttered as he crept through a hole in the hawthorn,
+hoping that the bull would not observe him. His
+object was to warn the farmer of the animal's
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later, he climbed the stile over which
+Mrs. Bindle had disappeared; but there was no sign
+either of her or of Mr. Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he reached the Summer-Camp that
+he found them seated outside the Bindles' tent. Mr.
+Hearty, looking pasty of feature, was endeavouring
+to convey to his blanched lips a cup of tea that Mrs.
+Bindle had just handed to him; but the trembling
+of his hand caused it to slop over the side of the cup
+on to his trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo, 'ere we are again," cried Bindle cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself," cried
+Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle stared at her with a puzzled expression.
+He looked at Mr. Hearty, then back again at Mrs.
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaving Mr. Hearty and me like that. We might
+have been killed." Her voice shook.</p>
+
+<p>"That would 'ave been a short cut to 'arps an'
+wings."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm ashamed of you, that I am," she continued,
+while Mr. Hearty turned upon his brother-in-law a
+pair of mildly reproachful eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed," muttered Bindle as he walked
+away. "If them two ain't IT. <i>Me</i> a-leavin' <i>them</i>.
+If that ain't a juicy bit."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty was only half-way through his second
+cup of tea when the Bishop of Fulham, followed by
+several of the summer-campers, appeared and walked
+briskly towards them.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's that husband of yours, Mrs. Bindle?"
+he enquired, as if he suspected Bindle of hiding from
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know, sir," she cried, rising, whilst
+Mr. Hearty, in following suit, stepped upon the tails
+of his coat and slopped the rest of the tea over his
+trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said the bishop. "I must find him. He's a
+fine fellow, crossing the field behind that bull to warn
+Mr. Timkins. If the beast had happened to get into the
+camp, it would have been the very&mdash;very disastrous,"
+he corrected himself, and with a nod he passed on
+followed by the other campers.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just like Bindle," she complained, "not
+saying a word, and making me ridiculous before the
+bishop. He's always treating me like that," and there
+was a whimper in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's very unfortunate," said Mr. Hearty
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Hearty," she said. "It's little
+enough sympathy I get."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>It was not until nearly four o'clock that Bindle re-appeared
+with the intimation that he was ready to
+conduct Mr. Hearty to call upon Farmer Timkins with
+regard to the strawberries, the purchase of which had
+been the object of Mr. Hearty's visit.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you come, too, Elizabeth?" enquired Mr.
+Hearty, turning to Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Hearty, I should like to," she replied,
+tightening her bonnet strings as if in anticipation of
+further violent movement.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty gave the invitation more as a precaution
+against Bindle's high-spirits, than from a desire for
+his sister-in-law's company.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, not that way," cried Bindle, as they were
+making for the gate leading to the road.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty looked hesitatingly at Mrs. Bindle, who,
+however, settled the question by marching resolutely
+towards the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"But it'll take a quarter of an hour that way,"
+Bindle protested.</p>
+
+<p>"If you think I'm going across any more fields with
+wild bulls, Bindle, you're mistaken," she announced
+with decision. "You've nearly killed Mr. Hearty once
+to-day. Let that be enough."</p>
+
+<p>With a feeling of thankfulness Mr. Hearty
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>"But that little bit o' beef is tied up with a ring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+through 'is bloomin' nose. I been an' 'ad a look at
+'im."</p>
+
+<p>"Ring or no ring," she snapped, "I'll have you know
+that I'm not going across any more fields. It's a
+mercy we're either of us alive."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle knew that he was not the other one referred
+to, and he reluctantly followed, grumbling about long
+distances and various veins.</p>
+
+<p>Although upon the high-road, both Mrs. Bindle and
+Mr. Hearty were what Bindle regarded as "a bit
+jumpy."</p>
+
+<p>From time to time they looked about them with
+obvious apprehension, as if anticipating that from every
+point of the compass a bull was preparing to charge
+down upon them.</p>
+
+<p>They paused at the main-entrance to the farm,
+allowing Bindle to lead the way.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way towards the house, their nostrils were
+assailed by a devastating smell; Mr. Hearty held his
+breath, whilst Mrs. Bindle produced a handkerchief,
+wiped her lips and then held it to her nose. She had
+always been given to understand that the only antidote
+for a bad smell was to spit; but she was too refined
+to act up to the dictum without the aid of her handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"Pigs!" remarked Bindle, raising his head and
+sniffing with the air of a connoisseur.</p>
+
+<p>"Extremely insanitary," murmured Mr. Hearty.
+"You did say the&mdash;er bull was tied up, Joseph?" he
+enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, 'e was when I see 'im," said Bindle, "but of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+course it wouldn't take long for 'im to undo 'imself."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty glanced about him anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the house the party paused. Nowhere
+was anyone to be seen. An old cart with its shafts
+pointing heavenward stood on the borders of a duck
+pond, green with slime.</p>
+
+<p>The place was muddy and unclean, and Mrs. Bindle,
+with a look of disgust, drew up her skirts almost to
+the tops of her elastic-sided boots.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle looked about him with interest. A hen
+appeared round the corner of the house, gazed at the
+newcomers for a few seconds, her head on one side,
+then disappeared from whence she had come.</p>
+
+<p>Ducks stood on their heads in the water, or quacked
+comfortably as they swam about, apparently either
+oblivious or indifferent to the fact that there were
+callers.</p>
+
+<p>From somewhere in the distance could be heard
+the sound of a horse stamping in its stall.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of five minutes an old man appeared
+carrying a pail. At the sight of strangers, he
+stopped dead, his slobbering lips gaping in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I see Mr. Timkins?" enquired Mr. Hearty, in
+refined but woolly tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Farmer be over there wi' Bessie. I tell un she'll
+foal' fore night; but 'e will 'ave it she won't. 'E'll see.
+'e will," he added with the air of a fatalist.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty turned aside and became interested in
+the ducks, whilst Mrs. Bindle flushed a deep vermilion.
+Bindle said nothing; but watched with enjoyment
+the confusion of the others.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man stared at them, puzzled to account for their
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you say Mr. Timkins was to be found?"
+enquired Mr. Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"I just tell ee, in the stable wi' Bessie. 'E says
+she won't foal; but I know she will. Why she&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty did not wait for further information;
+but turned and made for what, from the motion of
+the man's head, he took to be the stable.</p>
+
+<p>The others followed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not there," yelled the man, as if he were
+addressing someone in the next field. "Turn round
+to left o' that there muck 'eap."</p>
+
+<p>A convulsive shudder passed over Mr. Hearty's
+frame. He was appalled at the coarseness engendered
+by an agricultural existence. He hurried on so that
+he should not have to meet Mrs. Bindle's eye.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Farmer Timkins was seen approaching.
+He was a short, red-faced man in a bob-tailed
+coat with large flapped-pockets, riding-breeches and
+gaiters. In his hand he carried a crop which, at
+the sight of Mrs. Bindle, he raised to his hat in
+salutation.</p>
+
+<p>"Mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon," said Mr. Hearty genteelly.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer fixed his eyes upon Mr. Hearty's emaciated
+sallowness, with all the superiority of one who
+knows that he is a fine figure of a man.</p>
+
+<p>"It was you that upset Oscar, wasn't it?" There
+was more accusation than welcome in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Upset Oscar?" enquired Mr. Hearty, nervously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+looking from the farmer to Mrs. Bindle, then back
+again to the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my bull," explained Mr. Timkins.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Oscar wot nearly upset pore old 'Earty,"
+grinned Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"A savage beast like that ought to be shot," cried
+Mrs. Bindle, gazing squarely at the farmer. "It nearly
+killed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ought to be shot!" repeated the farmer, a dull
+flush rising to his face. "Shoot Oscar! Are you mad,
+ma'am?" he demanded, making an obvious effort to
+restrain his anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you dare to insult me," she cried. "You set
+that savage brute on to Mr. Hearty and it nearly killed
+him. I shall report you to the bishop&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;to
+the police," she added as an after-thought. "You
+ought to be prosecuted."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's lips had disappeared into a grey line,
+her face was very white, particularly at the corners of
+the mouth. For nearly two hours she had restrained
+herself. Now that she was face to face with the owner
+of the bull that had nearly plunged her into mourning,
+her anger burst forth.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer looked from one to the other in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"Report me to the police," he repeated dully.
+"What&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I will too," cried Mrs. Bindle, interpreting
+the farmer's strangeness of manner as indicative of
+fear. "Mad bulls are always shot."</p>
+
+<p>The farmer focussed his gaze upon Mrs. Bindle, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+if she belonged to a new species. His anger had
+vanished. He was overcome by surprise that anyone
+should be so ignorant of bulls and their ways as to
+believe Oscar mad.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ma'am, Oscar's no more mad than you or
+me. He's just a bit fresh. Most times he's as gentle
+as a lamb."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk to me about lambs," cried Mrs. Bindle,
+now thoroughly roused. "With my own eyes I saw
+it chasing Mr. Hearty across the field. It's a wonder
+he wasn't killed. I shall insist upon the animal being
+destroyed."</p>
+
+<p>The farmer turned to Bindle, as if for an explanation
+of such strange views upon bulls in general and Oscar
+in particular.</p>
+
+<p>"Oscar's all right, Lizzie," said Bindle pacifically.
+"'E only wanted to play tag with 'Earty."</p>
+
+<p>"You be quiet!" cried Mrs. Bindle. She felt that
+she already had the enemy well beaten and in terror
+of prosecution.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she continued, turning once more to
+Mr. Timkins, "you want to hide the fact that you're
+keeping a mad bull until you can turn it into beef and
+send it to market; but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Turn Oscar into beef!" roared the farmer. "Why,
+God dang my boots, ma'am, you're crazy! I wouldn't
+sell Oscar for a thousand pounds."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so," said Mrs. Bindle, looking across at
+Mr. Hearty, who was feeling intensely uncomfortable,
+"and people are to be chased about the country and
+murdered just because you won't&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But dang it, ma'am! there isn't a bull like Oscar
+for twenty miles round. Last year I had&mdash;let me see,
+how many calves&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be disgusting," she cried, whilst Mr. Hearty
+turned his head aside, and coughed modestly into his
+right hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Timkins gazed from one to the other in sheer
+amazement, whilst Bindle, who had so man[oe]uvred as
+to place himself behind Mrs. Bindle, caught the farmer's
+eye and tapped his forehead significantly.</p>
+
+<p>The simple action seemed to have a magical effect
+upon Mr. Timkins. His anger disappeared and his
+customary bluff geniality returned.</p>
+
+<p>He acknowledged Bindle's signal with a wink, then
+he turned to Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, ma'am, this is all my land, and I let the
+bishop have his camp&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't excuse you for keeping a mad bull,"
+was the uncompromising retort. The life of her hero
+had been endangered, and Mrs. Bindle was not to be
+placated by words.</p>
+
+<p>"But Oscar ain't mad," protested the farmer, taking
+off his hat and mopping his forehead with a large
+coloured-handkerchief he had drawn from his tail-pocket.
+"I tell you he's no more mad than what I
+am."</p>
+
+<p>"And I tell you he is," she retorted, with all the
+assurance of one thoroughly versed in the ways of
+bulls.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, it's like this here, mum," he said soothingly,
+intent upon placating one who was not "quite all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+there," as he would have expressed it. "It's all
+through the wind gettin' round to the sou'west. If
+it hadn't been for that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk to me about such rubbish," she interrupted
+scornfully. "I wonder you don't say it's
+because there's a new moon. I'm not a fool, although
+I haven't lived all my life on a farm."</p>
+
+<p>The farmer looked about him helplessly. Then he
+made another effort.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, ma'am, when the wind's in the sou'west,
+Oscar gets a whiff o' them cows in the home&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you!" The colour of Mrs. Bindle's
+cheeks transcended anything that Bindle had ever
+seen. "How dare you speak to me! How&mdash;you
+coarse&mdash;you&mdash;you disgusting beast!"</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of Mrs. Bindle's blazing eyes and heaving
+chest, the farmer involuntarily retreated a step.</p>
+
+<p>Several times he blinked his eyes in rapid
+succession.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty turned and concentrated his gaze upon
+what the old man had described as "that there muck
+'eap."</p>
+
+<p>"Bindle!" cried Mrs. Bindle. "Will you stand by
+and let that man insult me? He's a coarse, low&mdash;&mdash;"
+Her voice shook with suppressed passion. Mr. Hearty
+drew out his handkerchief and coughed into it.</p>
+
+<p>For several seconds Mrs. Bindle stood glaring at
+the farmer, then, with a sudden movement, she turned
+and walked away with short, jerky steps of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty continued to gaze at the muck heap,
+whilst the farmer watched the retreating form of Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+Bindle, as if she had been a double-headed calf, or a
+three-legged duck.</p>
+
+<p>When she had disappeared from sight round the
+corner of the house, he once more mopped his forehead
+with the coloured-handkerchief, then, thrusting it into
+his pocket, he resumed his hat with the air of a man
+who has escaped from some deadly peril.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all that there Jim," he muttered. "I told
+him to look out for the wind and move them cows;
+but will he? Not if he knows it, dang him."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you take it to 'eart," said Bindle cheerily.
+"It ain't no good to start back-chat with my missis."</p>
+
+<p>"But she said Oscar ought to be shot," grumbled
+the farmer. "Shoot Oscar!" he muttered to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, it's like this 'ere, religion's a funny
+thing. When it gets 'old of you, it either makes you
+mild, like 'Earty 'ere, or it makes you as 'ot as onions,
+like my missis. She don't mean no 'arm; but when
+you gone 'ead first over a stile, an' your sort o' shy
+about yer legs, it don't make you feel you wants to
+give yer sugar ticket to the bull wot did it."</p>
+
+<p>"The&mdash;the strawberries, Joseph," Mr. Hearty broke
+in upon the conversation, addressing Bindle rather
+than the farmer, of whom he stood in some awe.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! dang it, o' course, them strawberries," cried
+the farmer, who had been advised by Patrol-leader
+Smithers that a potential customer would call.
+"Come along this way," and he led the way to a
+large barn, still mumbling under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"This way," he cried again, as he entered and pointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+to where stood row upon row of baskets full of strawberries,
+heavily scenting the air. Hearty walked across
+the barn, picked up a specimen of the fruit and bit it.</p>
+
+<p>"What price are you asking for them?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Fourpence," was the retort.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid," said Mr. Hearty with all the instincts
+of the chafferer, "that I could not pay more than&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then go to hell!" roared the farmer. "You get
+off my farm or&mdash;or I'll let Oscar loose," he added with
+inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>For the last quarter of an hour he had restrained
+himself with difficulty; but Mr. Hearty's bargaining
+instinct had been the spark that had ignited the
+volcano of his wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hearty started back violently; stumbled against
+a large stone and sat down with a suddenness that
+caused his teeth to rattle.</p>
+
+<p>"Off you go!" yelled the farmer, purple with rage.
+"Here Jim," he shouted; but Mr. Hearty waited for
+nothing more. Picking himself up, he fled blindly, he
+knew not whither. It sufficed him that it should be
+away from that muscular arm which was gripping a
+formidable-looking crop.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle turned to follow, feeling that his own popularity
+had been submerged in the negative qualities
+of his wife and brother-in-law; but the farmer put
+out a restraining hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Not you," he said, "you come up to the house.
+I can give you a mug of ale the like of which you haven't
+tasted for years. I'm all upset, I am," he added, as
+if to excuse his outburst. "I'm not forgettin' that it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+was you that came an' told me about Oscar. He might
+a-done a middlin' bit o' damage." Then, suddenly
+recollecting the cause of all the trouble, he added,
+"Dang that old Jim! It was them cows what did it.
+Shoot Oscar!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMING OF THE WHIRLWIND</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"It's come, mate."</p>
+
+<p>"Go away, we're not up yet," cried the voice
+of Mrs. Bindle from inside the tent.</p>
+
+<p>"It's come, mate," repeated a lugubrious voice,
+which Bindle recognised as that of the tall, despondent
+man with the stubbly chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's come?" demanded Bindle, sitting up and
+throwing the bedclothes from his chest, revealing a
+washed-out pink flannel night-shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"The blinkin' field-kitchen," came the voice from
+without. "Comin' to 'ave a look at it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Righto, ole sport. I'll be out in two ticks."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have that man coming up to the
+tent when&mdash;when we're not up," said Mrs. Bindle
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Lizzie," reassured Bindle, "'e can't
+see through&mdash;an' 'e ain't that sort o' cove neither," he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle murmured an angry retort.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later Bindle, with trailing braces, left
+the tent and joined the group of men and children<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+gazing at a battered object that was strangely reminiscent
+of Stevenson's first steam-engine.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it," said the man with the stubbly chin,
+whose name was Barnes, known to his intimates as
+"'Arry," turning to greet Bindle and jerking a dirt-grimed
+thumb in the direction of the travelling field-kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Dubious heads were shaken. Many of the men had
+already had practical experience of the temperament
+possessed by an army field-kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"At Givenchy I see one of 'em cut in 'alf by a
+'Crump,'" muttered a little dark-haired man, with
+red-rimmed eyes that seemed to blink automatically.
+"It wasn't 'alf a sight, neither," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's goin' to stoke?" demanded Barnes,
+rubbing his chin affectionately with the pad of his
+right thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"'Im wot's been the wickedest," suggested Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>They were in no mood for lightness, however. None
+had yet breakfasted, and all had suffered the acute
+inconvenience of camping under the supreme direction
+of a benign but misguided cleric.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot the 'ell I come 'ere for, I don't know," said
+a man with a moist, dirty face. "Might a gone to
+Southend with my brother-in-law, I might," he added
+reminiscently.</p>
+
+<p>"You wasn't 'alf a mug, was you?" remarked a
+wiry little man in a singlet and khaki trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right there, mate," was the response.
+"Blinkin' barmy I must a' been."</p>
+
+<p>"I was goin' to Yarmouth," confided a third, "only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+my missis got this ruddy camp on the streamin' brain.
+Jawed about it till I was sick and give in for peace an'
+quietness. Now, look at me."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all the ruddy Government, a-startin' these 'ere
+stutterin' camps," complained a red-headed man with
+the face of a Bolshevist.</p>
+
+<p>"They 'as races at Yarmouth, too," grumbled the
+previous speaker.</p>
+
+<p>"Not till September," put in another.</p>
+
+<p>"August," said the first speaker aggressively, and
+the two proceeded fiercely to discuss the date of the
+Yarmouth Races.</p>
+
+<p>When the argument had gone as far as it could
+without blows, and had quieted all other conversation,
+Bindle slipped away from the group and returned to
+the tent to find Mrs. Bindle busy preparing breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>He smacked his lips with the consciousness that of
+all the campers he was the best fed.</p>
+
+<p>"Gettin' a move on," he cried cheerily, and once
+more he smacked his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity you can't do something to help," she
+retorted, "instead of loafing about with that pack of
+lazy scamps."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle retired to the interior of the tent and proceeded
+with his toilet.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, take no notice when I speak to you,"
+she snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my Gawd!" he groaned. "It's scratch
+all night an' scrap all day. It's an 'oliday all
+right."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He strove to think of something tactful to say;
+but at the moment nothing seemed to suggest itself,
+and Mrs. Bindle viciously broke three eggs into the
+frying-pan in which bacon was already sizzling, like
+an energetic wireless-plant.</p>
+
+<p>The savoury smell of the frying eggs and bacon
+reached Bindle inside the tent, inspiring him with
+feelings of benevolence and good-will.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Lizzie," he said contritely, "but I
+didn't 'ear you."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard well enough what I said," was Mrs.
+Bindle's rejoinder, as she broke a fourth egg into the
+pan.</p>
+
+<p>"The kitchen's come," he said pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, has it?" Mrs. Bindle did not raise her
+eyes from the frying-pan she was holding over the
+scout-fire.</p>
+
+<p>For a minute or two Bindle preserved silence,
+wondering what topic he possessed that would soothe
+her obvious irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"They say the big tent's down at the station," he
+remarked, repeating a rumour he had heard when
+engaged in examining the field-kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle vouchsafed no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you sleep well, Lizzie?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Sleep!" she repeated scornfully. "How was I
+to sleep on rough straw like that. I ache all over."</p>
+
+<p>He saw that he had made a false move in introducing
+the subject of sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"The milk hasn't come," she announced presently
+with the air of one making a statement she knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+would be unpopular. Bindle hated tea without
+milk.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so," he remarked. "I must 'ave
+a word with Daisy. She didn't oughter be puttin' on
+'er bloomin' frills."</p>
+
+<p>"The paraffin's got into the sugar," was the next
+bombshell.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said Bindle. "I suppose you can't
+'ave everythink as you would like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Another time, perhaps you'll get up yourself and
+help with the meals."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't much at them sort o' things," he replied,
+conscious that Mrs. Bindle's anger was rising.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave me to do everything, as if I was your
+slave instead of your wife."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle remained silent. He realized that there
+were times when it was better to bow to the storm.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it done yet?" he enquired, looking anxiously
+at the frying-pan.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all you care about, your stomach," she cried,
+her voice rising hysterically. "So long as you've got
+plenty to eat, nothing else matters. I wonder I stand
+it. I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bindle's eyes were still fixed anxiously upon the
+frying-pan, which, in her excitement, Mrs. Bindle
+was moving from side to side of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out!" he cried, "you'll upset it, an' I'm as
+'ungry as an 'awk."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the light of madness sprang into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you are, are you? Well, get somebody else
+to cook your meals," and with that she inverted the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+frying-pan, tipping the contents into the fire. As
+Bindle sprang up from the box on which he had been
+sitting, she rubbed the frying-pan into the ashes,
+making a hideous mess of the burning-wood, eggs and
+bacon.</p>
+
+<p>With a scream that was half a sob, she fled to
+the shelter of the tent, leaving Bindle to gaze down
+upon the wreck of what had been intended for his
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Picking up a stick, charred at one end, he began
+to rake among the embers in the vague hope of being
+able to disinter from the wreck something that was
+eatable; but Mrs. Bindle's action in rubbing the
+frying-pan into the ashes had removed from the contents
+all semblance of food. With a sigh he rose to
+his feet to find the bishop gazing down at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Had a mishap?" he asked pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You've 'it it, sir," grinned Bindle. "Twenty
+years ago," he added in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty years ago!" murmured the bishop, a
+puzzled expression on his face. "What was twenty
+years ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"The little mis'ap wot you was talkin' about, sir,"
+explained Bindle, still in a whisper. "I married
+Mrs. B. then, an' she gets a bit jumpy now and
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," whispered the bishop, "she upset the
+breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you can put it that way; but personally
+myself, I think it was the breakfast wot upset 'er."</p>
+
+<p>"And you've got nothing to eat?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not even a tin to lick out, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, dear me!" cried the bishop, genuinely
+distressed, and then, suddenly catching sight of Barnes's
+lugubrious form appearing from behind a neighbouring
+tent, he hailed him.</p>
+
+<p>Barnes approached with all the deliberation and
+unconcern of a pronounced fatalist.</p>
+
+<p>"Our friend here has had a mishap," said the bishop,
+indicating the fire. "Will you go round to my tent
+and get some eggs and bacon. Hurry up, there's a
+good fellow."</p>
+
+<p>Barnes turned on a deliberate heel, whilst Bindle
+and the bishop set themselves to the reconstruction
+of the scout-fire.</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Bindle peeped
+out of the tent, she saw the bishop and Bindle engaged
+in frying eggs and bacon; whilst Barnes stood gazing
+down at them with impassive pessimism.</p>
+
+<p>Rising to stretch his cramped legs, the bishop caught
+sight of Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mrs. Bindle. I hope your headache
+is better. Mr. Bindle has been telling me that
+he has had a mishap with your breakfast, so I'm
+helping him to cook it. I hope you won't mind if
+I join you in eating it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that's wot I call tack," muttered Bindle
+under his breath, "but my! ain't 'e a prize liar, 'im
+a parson too."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle came forward, an expression on her face
+that was generally kept for the Rev. Mr. MacFie, of
+the Alton Road Chapel.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's very kind of you, sir. I'm sorry Bindle let
+you help with the cooking."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm going to help with the eating," cried the
+bishop gaily.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's not fit work for a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you're going to say," said the bishop,
+"and I don't want you to say it. Here we are all
+friends, helping one another, and giving a meal when
+the hungry appears. For this morning I'm going to
+fill the rôle of the hungry. I wonder if you'll make
+the tea, Mrs. Bindle, Mr. Bindle tells me your tea is
+wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my Gawd!" murmured Bindle, casting up
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>With what was almost a smile, Mrs. Bindle proceeded
+to do the bishop's bidding.</p>
+
+<p>During the meal Bindle was silent, leaving the
+conversation to Mrs. Bindle and the bishop. By the
+time he had finished his third cup of tea, Mrs. Bindle
+was almost gay.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop talked household-management, touched
+on religion and Christian charity, slid off again to
+summer-camps, thence on to marriage, babies and
+the hundred and one other things dear to a woman's
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>When he finally rose to go, Bindle saw in Mrs. Bindle's
+eyes a smile that almost reached her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that if ever you honour us again, sir, you
+will let me know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mrs. Bindle, it's the unexpected that delights
+me, and I'm going to be selfish. Thank you for your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+hospitality and our pleasant chat," and with that
+he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle as he gazed
+after the figure of the retreating bishop, "an' me always
+thinkin' that you 'ad to 'ave an 'ymn an' a tin o'
+salmon to make love to Mrs. B."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, I suppose, you'll go off and leave me
+to do all the washing-up. Butter wouldn't melt in
+your mouth when the bishop was here. You couldn't
+say a word before him," she snapped, and she proceeded
+to gather together the dishes.</p>
+
+<p>"No," muttered Bindle as he fetched some sticks
+for the fire. "'E can talk tack all right; but when
+you wants it to last, it's better to 'ave a tin o' salmon
+to fall back on."</p>
+
+<p>That morning Daisy had a serious rival in the field-kitchen,
+which like her was an unknown quantity,
+capable alike of ministering to the happiness of
+all, or of withholding that which was expected of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon obvious to the bishop that the field-kitchen
+was going to prove as great a source of anxiety
+as Daisy. No one manifested any marked inclination
+to act as stoker. Apart from this, the bishop had
+entirely forgotten the important item of fuel, having
+omitted to order either coal or coke. In addition
+there was a marked suspicion, on the part of the wives,
+of what they regarded as a new-fangled way of cooking
+a meal. Many of them had already heard of army
+field-kitchens from their husbands, and were filled
+with foreboding.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It took all the bishop's tact and enthusiasm to modify
+their obvious antagonism.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't a-goin' to trust anythink o' mine in a rusty
+old thing like that," said a fat woman with a grimy
+skin and scanty hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Same 'ere, they didn't ought to 'ave let us come
+down without making proper pervision," complained
+a second, seizing an opportunity when the bishop's
+head was in the stoke-hole to utter the heresy.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me!" he said, withdrawing his head, unconscious
+that there was a black smudge on the right
+episcopal cheek. "It will take a dreadful lot of fuel.
+Now, who will volunteer to stoke?" turning his most
+persuasive smile upon the group of men, who had been
+keenly interested in his examination of the contrivance.</p>
+
+<p>The men shuffled their feet, looked at one another,
+as if each expected to find in another the spirit of
+sacrifice lacking in himself.</p>
+
+<p>Their disinclination was so marked that the bishop's
+face fell, until he suddenly caught sight of Bindle
+approaching.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he cried. "Here's the man I want. Now,
+Bindle," he called out, "you saved us from the bull,
+how would you like to become stoker?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely I ain't as bad as all that, sir," grinned
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not speaking professionally," laughed the
+bishop, who had already ingratiated himself with the
+men because he did not "talk like a ruddy parson."
+"I want somebody to take charge of this field-kitchen,"
+he continued. "I'd do it myself, only I've got such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+a lot of other things to see to. I'll borrow some coal
+from Mr. Timkins."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle gazed dubiously at the unattractive mass of
+iron, dabbed with the weather-worn greens and browns
+of camouflage and war.</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite simple," said the bishop. "You light
+the fire here, that's the oven, and you boil things here,
+and&mdash;we shall soon get it going."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind stokin', sir," said Bindle at length;
+"but I ain't a-goin' to take charge of 'oo's dinner's wot.
+If there's goin' to be any scrappin' with the ladies,
+well, I ain't in it."</p>
+
+<p>Finally it was arranged that Bindle should start
+the fire and get the field-kitchen into working order,
+and that the putting-in the oven and taking-out again
+of the various dishes should be left to the discretion
+of the campers themselves, who were to be responsible
+for the length of time required to cook their own
+particular meals.</p>
+
+<p>With astonishing energy, the bishop set the children
+to collect wood, and soon Bindle, throwing himself into
+the work with enthusiasm, had the fire well alight.
+There had arrived from the farm a good supply of coal
+and coke.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't 'alf 'it it unlucky, mate," said the man
+with the bristly chin. "'E ought to 'ave 'ired a cook,"
+he added. "We come 'ere to enjoy ourselves, not to
+be blinkin' stokers. That's like them ruddy parsons,"
+he added, "always wantin' somethin' for nuffin."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, come along, cheerful," cried Bindle, "give
+me a 'and with this coke," and, a minute later, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+lugubrious Barnes found himself sweating like a horse,
+and shovelling fuel into the kitchen's voracious maw.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not the way!"</p>
+
+<p>The man straightened his back and, with one
+hand on the spade, gazed at Mrs. Bindle, who had
+approached unobserved. With the grubby thumb of
+his other hand he rubbed his chin, giving to his unprepossessing
+features a lopsided appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot ain't the way, missis?" he asked with the
+air of one quite prepared to listen to reason.</p>
+
+<p>"The coke should be damped," was the response,
+"and you're putting in too much."</p>
+
+<p>"But we want it to burn up," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle ostentatiously turned upon him a narrow
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> ought to know better, at least, Bindle," she
+snapped, and proceeded to give him instruction in the
+art of encouraging a fire.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better take some out," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere ole sport," cried Bindle, "give us&mdash;&mdash;" he
+stopped suddenly. His assistant had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't let anyone put anything in until the
+oven's hot," continued Mrs. Bindle, "and you mustn't
+open the door too often. You'd better fix a time when
+they can bring the food, say eleven o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Early doors threepence extra?" queried Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to have sausage-toad-in-the-hole, and
+mind you don't burn it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll watch it as if it was my own cheeild," vowed
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"If the bishop knew you as I know you, he wouldn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+have trusted you with this," said Mrs. Bindle, as she
+walked away with indrawn lips and head in the air,
+stepping with the self-consciousness of a bantam that
+feels its spurs.</p>
+
+<p>"Blowed if she don't think I volunteered for the
+bloomin' job," he muttered, as he ceased extracting
+pieces of coke from the furnace. "Well, if their
+dinner ain't done it's their fault, an' if it's overdone it
+ain't mine," and with that he drew his pipe from his
+pocket and filled it.</p>
+
+<p>"No luck," he cried, as a grey-haired old woman
+with the dirt of other years on her face hobbled up
+with a pie-dish. "Doors ain't open yet."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's an onion pie," grumbled the old dame,
+"and onions takes a lot o' cookin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't 'elp it," grinned Bindle. "Doors ain't
+open till eleven."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" began the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin', doin' mother," said the obstinate Bindle.
+"You see this 'ere is a religious kitchen. It's
+a different sort from an ordinary blasphemious
+kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>On the stroke of eleven Mrs. Bindle appeared with
+a large brown pie-dish, the sight of which made Bindle's
+mouth water.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then," he cried, "line up for the bakin'-queue.
+Shillin' a 'ead an' all bad nuts changed. Oh!
+no, you don't," he cried, as one woman proffered a basin.
+"I'm stoker, not cook. You shoves 'em in yourself,
+an' you fetches 'em when you wants 'em. If there's
+any scrappin' to be done, I'll be umpire."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One by one the dishes were inserted in the oven, and
+one by one their owners retired, a feeling of greater
+confidence in their hearts now that they could prepare
+a proper dinner. The men went off to get a drink,
+and soon Bindle was alone.</p>
+
+<p>During the first half-hour Mrs. Bindle paid three
+separate visits to the field-kitchen. To her it was a
+new and puzzling contrivance, and she had no means
+of gauging the heat of the oven. She regarded it
+distrustfully and, on the occasion of the second visit,
+gave a special word of warning to Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>At 11.40 Barnes returned with a large black bottle,
+which he held out to Bindle with an invitation to
+"'ave a drink."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle removed the cork and put the bottle to his
+lips, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down
+joyously.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he cried, as he at length lowered the bottle
+and his head at the same time. "That's the stuff
+to give 'em," and reluctantly he handed back the
+bottle to its owner, who hastily withdrew at the sight
+of Mrs. Bindle approaching.</p>
+
+<p>When she had taken her departure, Bindle began to
+feel drowsy. The sun was hot, the air was still, and
+the world was very good to live in. Still, there was
+the field-kitchen to be looked after.</p>
+
+<p>For some time he struggled against the call of sleep;
+but do what he would, his head continued to nod, and
+his eyelids seemed weighted with lead.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he had an inspiration. If he stoked-up
+the field-kitchen, it would look after itself, and he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+could have just the "forty winks" his nature
+craved.</p>
+
+<p>With feverish energy he set to work with the shovel,
+treating the two stacks of coal and coke with entire
+impartiality. Then, when he had filled the furnace,
+he closed the door with the air of the Roman sentry
+relieving himself of responsibility by setting a burglar-alarm.
+Getting well out of the radius of the heat
+caused by the furnace, he composed himself to slumber
+behind the heap of coke.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he was aroused from a dream in which
+he stood on the deck of a wrecked steamer, surrounded
+by steam which was escaping with vicious hisses from
+the damaged boilers.</p>
+
+<p>He sat up and looked about him. The air seemed
+white with vapour, in and out of which two figures
+could be seen moving. He struggled to his feet and
+looked about him.</p>
+
+<p>A few yards away he saw Mrs. Bindle engaged in
+throwing water at the field-kitchen, and then dashing
+back quickly to escape the smother of steam that
+resulted. The bishop, with a bucket and a pink-and-blue
+jug, was dashing water on to the monster's back.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle gazed at the scene in astonishment, then,
+making a detour, he approached from the opposite
+side, to see what it was that had produced the crisis.
+Just at that moment, the bishop decided that the pail
+had been sufficiently lightened by the use of the pink-and-blue
+jug to enable him to lift it.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Bindle was the centre of a cascade
+of water and a mantle of spray.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Ere! wot the 'ell?" he bawled.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop dodged round to the other side and apologised
+profusely, explaining how Mrs. Bindle had discovered
+that the field-kitchen had become overheated
+and that between them they were trying to lower its
+temperature.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but I ain't over'eated," protested Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"You put too much coal in, Bindle; the place would
+have been red-hot in half an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Well; but look at all them dinners that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk to him, my lord," said Mrs. Bindle, who
+from a fellow-camper had learned how a bishop should
+be addressed. "He's done it on purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Mrs. Bindle," said the bishop genially.
+"I'm sure he didn't mean to do it. It's really my
+fault."</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Bindle left it at that.</p>
+
+<p>From that point, however, she took charge of the
+operations, the bishop and Bindle working under her
+direction. The news that the field-kitchen was on fire,
+conveyed to their parents by the children, had brought
+up the campers in full-force and at the double.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a rush for the oven; but Mrs. Bindle
+soon showed that she had the situation well in hand,
+and the sight of the bishop doing her bidding had a
+reassuring effect.</p>
+
+<p>Under her supervision, each dish and basin was withdrawn,
+and first aid administered to such as required
+it. Those that were burnt, were tended with a skill
+and expedition that commanded the admiration of
+every housewife present. They were content to leave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+matters in hands that they recognised were more
+capable than their own.</p>
+
+<p>When the salvage work was ended, and the dishes
+and basins replaced in an oven that had been reduced
+to a suitable temperature, the bishop mopped his brow,
+whilst Mrs. Bindle stood back and gazed at the field-kitchen
+as St. George might have regarded the conquered
+dragon.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was flushed, and her hands were grimed;
+but in her eyes was a keen satisfaction. For once in
+her life she had occupied the centre of something larger
+than a domestic stage.</p>
+
+<p>"My friends," cried the bishop, always ready to
+say a few words or point the moral, "we are all under
+a very great obligation to our capable friend Mrs.
+Bindle, a veritable Martha among women;" he indicated
+Mrs. Bindle with a motion of what was probably
+the dirtiest episcopal hand in the history of the Church.
+"She has saved the situation and, what is more, she
+has saved our dinners. Now," he cried boyishly, "I
+call for three cheers for Mrs. Bindle."</p>
+
+<p>And they were given with a heartiness that caused
+Mrs. Bindle a queer sensation at the back of her
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>The campers flocked round her and found that she
+whom they had regarded as "uppish," could be almost
+gracious. Anyhow, she had saved their dinners.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Bindle's hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy 'im a-callin' 'er Martha, when 'er name's
+Lizzie," muttered Bindle, as he strolled off. He had
+taken no very prominent part in the proceedings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>&mdash;he
+was a little ashamed of the part he had played in
+what had proved almost a tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>That day the Tired Workers dined because of Mrs.
+Bindle, and they knew it. Various were the remarks
+exchanged among the groups collected outside the
+tents.</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't 'alf order the bishop about," remarked
+to his wife the man who should have gone to Yarmouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Any way, if it 'adn't been for 'er you'd 'ave 'ad
+cinders instead o' baked chops and onions for yer
+dinner," was the rejoinder, as his wife, a waspish
+little woman, rubbed a piece of bread round her
+plate. "She ain't got much to learn about a
+kitchen stove, I'll say that for 'er," she added, with
+the air of one who sees virtue in unaccustomed
+places.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon when Bindle was lying down inside
+the tent, endeavouring to digest some fifty per cent.
+more sausage-toad-in-the-hole than he was licensed to
+carry, he was aroused from a doze by the sound of voices
+without.</p>
+
+<p>"We brought 'em for you, missis." It was the
+man with the stubbly chin speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Must 'ave made you a bit firsty, all that 'eat,"
+remarked another voice.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle sat up. Events were becoming interesting.
+He crept to the opening of the tent and slightly pulled
+aside the flap.</p>
+
+<p>"Best dinner we've 'ad yet." The speaker was
+the man who had seen a field-kitchen dissected at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+Givenchy. He was just in the line of Bindle's
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>Pulling the flap still further aside, he saw half-a-dozen
+men standing awkwardly before Mrs. Bindle who,
+with a bottle of Guinness' stout in either hand, was
+actually smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very kind of you," she said. "Thank you
+very much."</p>
+
+<p>In his astonishment, Bindle dropped the flap, and
+the picture was blotted out.</p>
+
+<p>"Come an' 'ave a look at Daisy," he heard the
+man with the stubbly chin say. It was obviously
+his conception of terminating an awkward interview.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day," he heard a voice mumble, to which
+Mrs. Bindle replied with almost cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle scrambled back to his mattress, just as Mrs.
+Bindle pulled aside the flap of the tent and entered, a
+bottle still in either hand. At the sight, Bindle became
+aware of a thirst which until then had slumbered.</p>
+
+<p>"I can do with a drop o' Guinness," he cried cheerily,
+his eyes upon the bottles. "Nice o' them coves to
+think of us."</p>
+
+<p>"It was me, not you," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder,
+as she stepped across to her mattress.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't drink beer, Lizzie," he protested.
+"You're temperance. I'll drink 'em for you."</p>
+
+<p>"If you do, I'll kill you, Bindle." And the intensity
+with which she uttered the threat decided him that
+it would be better to leave the brace of Guinness
+severely alone; but he was sorely puzzled.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>That evening, in the sanded tap-room of The Trowel
+and Turtle, the male summer-campers expressed themselves
+for the twentieth time uncompromisingly upon
+the subject of bishops and summer-camps. They were
+"fed up to the ruddy neck," and would give not a
+little to be back in London, where it was possible to find
+a pub "without gettin' a blinkin' blister on your
+stutterin' 'eel."</p>
+
+<p>It was true the field-kitchen had arrived, that
+they had eaten their first decent meal, and there was
+every reason to believe that the marquee was at the
+station; still they were "sick of the whole streamin'
+business."</p>
+
+<p>To add to their troubles the landlord of The Trowel
+and Turtle expressed grave misgivings as to the
+weather. The glass was dropping, and there was
+every indication of rain.</p>
+
+<p>"Rain'll jest put the scarlet lid on this blinkin'
+beano," was the opinion expressed by one of the party
+and endorsed by all, as, with the landlord's advice to
+see that everything was made snug for the night,
+they trooped out of the comfortable tap-room and
+turned their heads towards the Summer-Camp.</p>
+
+<p>At the entrance of the meadow they were met by
+Patrol-leader Smithers.</p>
+
+<p>"You must slack the ropes of your tents," he
+announced, "there may be rain. Only just slack them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+a bit; don't overdo it, or they'll come down on the
+top of you if the wind gets up."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh crikey!" moaned a long man with a straggling
+moustache, as he watched Patrol-leader Smithers march
+briskly down the lane.</p>
+
+<p>For some moments the men gazed at one another in
+consternation; each visualised the desperate state of
+discomfort that would ensue as the result of wind and
+rain.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go an' 'ave a look at Daisy," said Bindle
+inconsequently.</p>
+
+<p>His companions stared at him in surprise. A shrill
+voice in the distance calling "'Enery" seemed to lend
+to them decision, particularly to 'Enery himself.
+They turned and strolled over to where Daisy was
+engaged in preparing the morrow's milk supply. She
+had been milked and was content.</p>
+
+<p>"Look 'ere, mates," began Bindle, having assured
+himself that there were no eavesdroppers, "we're all
+fed up with Summer-Camps for tired workers&mdash;that
+so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the blinkin' neck," said a big man
+with a dirt-grimed skin, voicing the opinion of
+all.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no pubs," said a burly man with black
+whiskers, "no pictures, can't put a shillin' on an 'orse,
+can't do anythink&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But watch this ruddy cow," broke in the man with
+the stubbly chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, p'raps you're right, only I couldn't
+'ave said it 'alf as politely," said Bindle, with a grin.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+"We're all for good ole Fulham where a cove can lay
+the dust. Ain't that so, mates?"</p>
+
+<p>The men expressed their agreement according to
+the intensity of their feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, listen," said Bindle, "an' I'll tell you."
+They drew nearer and listened.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty minutes later, when the voice demanding
+'Enery became too insistent to be denied, the party
+broke up, and there was in the eyes of all that which
+spoke of hope.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">III</p>
+
+<p>That night, as Patrol-leader Smithers had foretold,
+there arose a great wind which smote vigorously the
+tents of the Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers.
+For a time the tents withstood the fury of the blast;
+they swayed and bent before it, putting up a vigorous
+defence however. Presently a shriek told of the first
+catastrophe; then followed another and yet another,
+and soon the darkness was rent by cries, shrieks, and
+lamentations, whilst somewhere near the Bindles'
+tent rose the voice of one crying from a wilderness of
+canvas for 'Enery.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was awakened by the loud slatting of
+the tent-flap. Pandemonium seemed to have broken
+loose. The wind howled and whistled through the
+tent-ropes, the rain swept against the canvas sides with
+an ominous "swish," the pole bent as the tent swayed
+from side to side.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bindle," she cried, "get up!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo!" he responded sleepily. He had taken
+the precaution of not removing his trousers, a circumstance
+that was subsequently used as evidence against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"The tent's coming down," she cried. "Get up
+and hold the prop."</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, she scrambled from beneath the
+blankets and seized the brown mackintosh, which she
+kept ready to hand in case of accidents. Wrapping
+this about her, she clutched at the bending pole,
+whilst Bindle struggled out from among the bedclothes.</p>
+
+<p>Scrambling to his feet, he tripped over the tin-bath.
+Clutching wildly as he fell, he got Mrs. Bindle just
+above the knees in approved rugger style.</p>
+
+<p>With a scream she relinquished the pole to free her
+legs from Bindle's frenzied clutch and, losing her
+footing, she came down on top of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave go," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up orf my stomach then," he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, the wind gave a tremendous lift
+to the tent. Mrs. Bindle was clutching wildly at the
+base of the pole, Bindle was striving to wriggle from
+beneath her. The combination of forces caused the
+tent to sway wildly. A moment later, it seemed to
+start angrily from the ground, and she fell over backwards,
+whilst a mass of sopping canvas descended,
+stifling alike her screams and Bindle's protests that he
+was being killed.</p>
+
+<p>It took Bindle nearly five minutes to find his way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+out from the heavy folds of wet canvas. Then he had
+to go back into the darkness to fetch Mrs. Bindle. In
+order to effect his own escape, Bindle had cut the tent-ropes.
+Just as he had found Mrs. Bindle, a wild gust
+of wind entered behind him, lifted the tent bodily
+and bore it off.</p>
+
+<p>The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed to strike
+Mrs. Bindle dumb. To be sitting in the middle of a
+meadow at dead of night, clothed only in a nightdress
+and a mackintosh, with the rain drenching down,
+seemed to her to border upon the indecent.</p>
+
+<p>"You there, Lizzie?" came the voice of Bindle,
+like the shout of one hailing a drowning person.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the tent?" demanded Mrs. Bindle inconsequently.</p>
+
+<p>"Gawd knows!" he shouted back. "Probably it's
+at Yarmouth by now. 'Oly ointment," he yelled.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I trodden on the marjarine."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all we've got," she cried, her housewifely fears
+triumphing over even the stress of wind and rain and
+her own intolerable situation.</p>
+
+<p>From the surrounding darkness came shouts and
+enquiries as disaster followed disaster. Heaving
+masses of canvas laboured and, one by one, produced
+figures scanty of garment and full of protest; but
+mercifully unseen.</p>
+
+<p>Women cried, children shrieked, and men swore
+volubly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sittin' in somethink sticky," cried Bindle
+presently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've upset the marmalade. Why can't you
+keep still?"</p>
+
+<p>Keep still! Bindle was searching for the two bottles
+of Guinness' stout he knew to be somewhere among the
+débris, unconscious that Mrs. Bindle had packed them
+away in the tin-bath.</p>
+
+<p>As the other tents disgorged their human contents,
+the pandemonium increased. In every key, appeals
+were being made for news of lost units.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of the tin-bath Mrs. Bindle was praying
+for succour and the lost bell-tent, which had sped
+towards the east as if in search of the wise men, leaving
+all beneath it naked to the few stars that peeped from
+the scudding clouds above, only to hide their faces
+a moment later as if shocked at what they had
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a brilliant light flashed across the meadow
+and began to bob about like a hundred candle power
+will-o'-the-wisp. It dodged restlessly from place to
+place, as if in search of something.</p>
+
+<p>Behind a large acetylene motor-lamp, walked Patrol-leader
+Smithers, searching for one single erect bell-tent&mdash;there
+was none.</p>
+
+<p>Shrieks that had been of terror now became cries of
+alarm. Forms that had struggled valiantly to escape
+from the billowing canvas, now began desperately to
+wriggle back again to the seclusion that modesty
+demanded. With heads still protruding they regarded
+the scene, praying that the rudeness of the wind would
+not betray them.</p>
+
+<p>Taking immediate charge, Patrol-leader Smithers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+collected the men and gave his orders in a high treble,
+and his orders were obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the dawn had begun nervously to finger
+the east, sufficient tents to shelter the women and
+children had been re-erected, the cause of the trouble
+discovered, and the men rebuked for an injudicious
+slacking of the ropes.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to have seen to it myself," remarked
+Patrol-leader Smithers with the air of one who knows
+he has to deal with fools. "You'll be all right now,"
+he added reassuringly.</p>
+
+<p>"All right now," growled the man with the stubbly
+chin as he looked up at the grey scudding clouds and
+then down at the rain-soaked grass. "We would if
+we was ducks, or ruddy boy scouts; but we're men,
+we are&mdash;on 'oliday," he added with inspiration, and
+he withdrew to his tent, conscious that he had voiced
+the opinion of all.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">V</p>
+
+<p>Later that morning three carts, laden with luggage,
+rumbled their way up to West Boxton railway-station,
+followed by a straggling stream of men, women, and
+children. Overhead heavy rainclouds swung threateningly
+across the sky. Men were smoking their pipes
+contentedly, for theirs was the peace which comes of
+full knowledge. Behind them they had left a litter
+of bell-tents and the conviction that Daisy in all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+probability would explode before dinner-time. What
+cared they? A few hours hence they would be once
+more in their known and understood Fulham.</p>
+
+<p>As they reached the station they saw two men
+struggling with a grey mass that looked like a deflated
+balloon.</p>
+
+<p>The men hailed the party and appealed for help.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the ruddy marquee," cried a voice.</p>
+
+<p>"The blinkin' tent," cried another, not to be outdone
+in speculative intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"You can take it back with you," cried one of the
+men from the truck.</p>
+
+<p>"We're demobbed, ole son," said Bindle cheerily.
+"We've struck."</p>
+
+<p>"No more blinkin' camps for me," said the man
+with the stubbly chin.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ear, 'ear," came from a number of voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we down-hearted?" enquired a voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Nooooooooo!"</p>
+
+<p>And the voices of women and children were heard in
+the response.</p>
+
+<p>Some half an hour later, as the train steamed out of
+the station, Bindle called out to the porters:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the bishop not to forget to milk Daisy."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. B.," said Bindle that evening as he
+lighted his pipe after an excellent supper of sausages,
+fried onions, and mashed potatoes, "you 'ad yer
+'oliday."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you was at the bottom of those tents
+coming down, Bindle," she cried with conviction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, you was underneath, wasn't you?" was
+the response, and Bindle winked knowingly at
+the white jug with the pink butterfly on the
+spout.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE TAKES A CHILL</h3>
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+<blockquote>
+
+    <p>"Your dinner's in the large black saucepan and the potatoes in the
+    blue one. Empty the stewed steak into the yellow pie-dish and the
+    potatoes into the blue vegetable dish and pour water into the
+    saucepans afterwards I've gone to bed&mdash;I am feeling ill.</p>
+
+    <p class="right">"E. B.</p>
+
+    <p>"Don't forget to put water into the empty saucepans or they will
+    burn."</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+<p>Bindle glanced across at the stove as if to verify
+Mrs. Bindle's statement, then, with lined forehead,
+stood gazing at the table, neatly laid for
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"I never known Lizzie give in before," he muttered,
+and he walked over to the sink and proceeded to have
+his evening "rinse," an affair involving a considerable
+expenditure of soap and much blowing and
+splashing.</p>
+
+<p>Having wiped his face and hands upon the roller-towel,
+he walked softly across the kitchen, opened the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+door, listened, stepped out into the passage and,
+finally, proceeded to tiptoe upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the bedroom door he paused and listened
+again, his ear pressed against the panel. There was no
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>With the stealth of a burglar he turned the handle,
+pushed open the door some eighteen inches and put
+his head round the corner.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle was lying in bed on her back, her face
+void of all expression, whilst with each indrawn breath
+there was a hard, metallic sound.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle wriggled the rest of his body round the door-post,
+closing the door behind him. With ostentatious
+care, still tiptoeing, he crossed the room and stood by
+the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you feelin' well, Lizzie?" he asked in a
+hoarse whisper, sufficient in itself to remind an invalid
+of death.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you put water in the saucepans?" She asked
+the question without turning her head, and with the
+air of one who has something on her mind. The
+harsh rasp of her voice alarmed Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't 'ad supper yet," he said. "Is there anythink
+you'd like?" he enquired solicitously, still
+in the same depressing whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"No; just leave me alone," she murmured.
+"Don't forget the water in the saucepans," she added
+a moment later.</p>
+
+<p>For some seconds Bindle stood irresolute. He was
+convinced that something ought to be done; but just
+what he did not know.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you like a bit o' fried fish, or&mdash;or a pork
+chop?" he named at a venture two of his favourite
+supper dishes. The fish he could buy ready fried,
+the chop he felt equal to cooking himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone." She turned her head aside with
+a feeble shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you ill, Lizzie?" he enquired at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Go away," she moaned, and Bindle turned, tip-toed
+across to the door and passed out of the room.
+He was conscious that the situation was beyond
+him.</p>
+
+<p>That evening he ate his food without relish. His
+mind was occupied with the invalid upstairs and the
+problem of what he should do. He was unaccustomed
+to illness, either in himself or in others. His instinct
+was to fetch a doctor; but would she like it? It
+was always a little difficult to anticipate Mrs. Bindle's
+view of any particular action, no matter how well-intentioned.</p>
+
+<p>At the conclusion of the meal, he drew his pipe from
+his pocket and proceeded to smoke with a view to
+inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he was roused by a loud pounding overhead.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oly ointment, she's fallen out!" he muttered, as
+he made for the door and dashed up the stairs two at
+a time.</p>
+
+<p>As he opened the door, he found Mrs. Bindle sitting
+up in bed, a red flannel petticoat round her shoulders,
+sniffing the air like a hungry hound.</p>
+
+<p>"You're burning my best saucepan," she croaked.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I ain't, Lizzie, reelly I ain't&mdash;&mdash;" Then memory
+came to him. He had forgotten to put water in either
+of the saucepans.</p>
+
+<p>"I can smell burning," she persisted, "you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I spilt some stoo on the stove," he lied, feeling
+secure in the knowledge that she could not disprove
+the statement.</p>
+
+<p>With a groan she sank back on to her pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"The place is like a pigsty. I know it," she moaned
+with tragic conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it ain't, Lizzie. I'm jest goin' to 'ave a clean-up.
+Wouldn't you like somethink to eat?" he enquired
+again, then with inspiration added, "Wot about a tin
+o' salmon, it'll do your breath good. I'll nip round and
+get one in two ticks."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Bindle shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a minute there was silence, during which
+Bindle gazed down at her helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a-goin' to fetch a doctor," he announced at
+length.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you dare to fetch a doctor to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you ain't well&mdash;&mdash;" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you I won't have a doctor. Look&mdash;&mdash;" She
+was interrupted by a fit of coughing which seemed
+almost to suffocate her. "Look at the state of the
+bedroom," she gasped at length.</p>
+
+<p>"But wot's goin' to 'appen?" asked Bindle. "You
+can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It won't matter," she moaned. "If I die you'll
+be glad," she added, as if to leave no doubt in Bindle's
+mind as to her own opinion on the matter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, I shouldn't. 'Ow could I get on without
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thinking of yourself as usual," was the retort.</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, she half-lifted herself in bed and,
+once more raising her head, sniffed the air suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that saucepan's burning," she said with
+conviction; but she sank back again, panting. The
+burning of a saucepan seemed a thing of ever-lessening
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it ain't, Lizzie, reelly it ain't. I filled it right
+up to the brim. It's that bit o' stoo I spilt on the stove.
+Stinks like billy-o, don't it?" His sense of guilt
+made him garrulous. "I'll go an' scrape it orf," he
+added, and with that he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my Gawd!" he muttered as he opened the
+kitchen door, and was greeted by a volume of bluish
+smoke that seemed to catch at his throat.</p>
+
+<p>He made a wild dash for the stove, seized the saucepan
+and, taking it over to the sink, turned on the
+tap.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later he dropped the saucepan into the
+sink and started back, blinded by a volume of steam
+that issued from its interior.</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly and quietly he opened the window and the
+outer door.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't no cook, J.B.," he muttered, as he
+unhitched the roller-towel and proceeded to use it as
+a fan, with the object of driving the smell out of the
+window and scullery-door.</p>
+
+<p>When the air was clearer, he returned to the sink and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+this time, filled both the saucepans with water and
+replaced them on the stove.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder wot I better do," he muttered, and he
+looked about him helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with sudden inspiration, he remembered Mrs.
+Hearty.</p>
+
+<p>Creeping softly upstairs, he put his head round the
+bedroom door and announced that he was going
+out to buy a paper. Without waiting for either
+criticism or comment, he quickly closed the door
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, he was opening the glass-panelled
+door, with the white curtains and blue tie-ups, that
+led from Mr. Hearty's Fulham shop to the parlour
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty was sitting at the table, a glass half-full
+of Guinness' stout before her.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of Bindle, she began to laugh, and
+laughter always reduced her to a state that was half-anguish,
+half-ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Joe!" she wheezed, and then began to heave
+and undulate with mirth.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the anxious look on his face she
+stopped suddenly, and with her clenched fist began to
+pound her chest.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my breath, Joe," she wheezed. "It don't
+seem to get no better. 'Ave a drop," she gasped,
+pointing to the Guinness bottle on the table. "There's
+a glass on the dresser," she added; but Bindle shook
+an anxious head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Lizzie," he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Lizzie!" wheezed Mrs. Hearty. "What she been
+doin' now?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty possessed no illusions about her sister's
+capacity to contrive any man's domestic happiness.
+Her own philosophy was, "If things must happen,
+let 'em," whereas she was well aware that Mrs.
+Bindle strove to control the wheels of destiny.</p>
+
+<p>"When you're my size," she would say, "you won't
+want to worry about anything; it's the lean 'uns as
+grizzles."</p>
+
+<p>"She's ill in bed," he explained, "an' I don't
+know wot to do. Says she won't see a doctor,
+an' she's sort o' fidgetty because she thinks I'm
+burnin' the bloomin' saucepans&mdash;an' I 'ave burned
+'em, Martha," he added confidentially. "Such a
+stink."</p>
+
+<p>Whereat Mrs. Hearty began to heave, and strange
+movements rippled down her manifold chins. She was
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, no corresponding light of
+humour in Bindle's eyes, and she quickly recovered
+herself. "What's the matter with 'er, Joe?" she
+gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't say where it is," he replied. "I think
+it's 'er chest."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I'll come round," and she proceeded to
+make a series of strange heaving movements until,
+eventually, she acquired sufficient bounce to bring her
+to her feet. "You go back, Joe," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"Righto, Martha! You always was a sport," and
+Bindle walked towards the door. As he opened it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+he turned. "You won't say anythink about them
+saucepans," he said anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! go hon, do," wheezed Mrs. Hearty, beginning
+to undulate once more.</p>
+
+<p>With her brother-in-law, Mrs. Hearty was never
+able to distinguish between the sacred and the profane.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later, Mrs. Hearty and Bindle were
+standing one on either side of Mrs. Bindle's bed. Mrs.
+Hearty was wearing a much-worn silk plush cape and
+an old, pale-blue tam-o-shanter, originally belonging to
+her daughter, which gave her a rakish appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Lizzie?" she asked, puffing
+like a collie in the Dog Days.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm ill. Leave me alone!" moaned Mrs. Bindle
+in a husky voice.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle looked across at Mrs. Hearty, in a way that
+seemed to say, "I told you she was bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a fool, Lizzie," was her sister's uncompromising
+comment. "You go for a doctor, Joe."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have&mdash;&mdash;" began Mrs. Bindle, then she
+stopped suddenly, a harsh, bronchial cough cutting off
+the rest of her sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got bronchitis," said Mrs. Hearty with
+conviction. "Put the kettle on before you go out,
+Joe."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone," moaned Mrs. Bindle. "Oh!
+I don't want to die, I don't want to die."</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't goin' to die, Lizzie," said Bindle, bending
+over her, anxiety in his face. "You're goin' to live
+to be a 'undred."</p>
+
+<p>"You go an' fetch a doctor, Joe. I'll see to 'er,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+and Mrs. Hearty proceeded to remove her elaborate
+black plush cape.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a doctor," moaned Mrs. Bindle. In
+her heart was a great fear lest he should confirm her
+own fears that death was at hand; but Bindle had
+disappeared on his errand of mercy, and Mrs. Hearty
+was wheezing and groaning as, with arms above her
+head, she strove to discover the single hat-pin with which
+she had fixed the tam-o-shanter to her scanty hair.</p>
+
+<p>"There's two rashers of bacon and an egg on the top
+shelf of the larder for Joe's breakfast," murmured Mrs.
+Bindle hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty nodded as she passed out of the door.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her weight and the shortness of her breath,
+she descended to the kitchen. When Bindle returned,
+he found the bedroom reeking with the smell of vinegar.
+Mrs. Bindle was sitting up in bed, a towel enveloping
+her head, so that the fumes of the boiling vinegar should
+escape from the basin only by way of her bronchial
+tubes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow is she?" he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"She's all right," gasped Mrs. Hearty. "Is 'e
+coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Be 'ere in two ticks," was the response. "Two of
+'em was out, this was the third."</p>
+
+<p>He stood regarding with an air of relief the strange
+outline of Mrs. Bindle's head enveloped in the towel.
+Someone had at last done something.</p>
+
+<p>"She ain't a-goin' to die, Martha, is she?" he
+enquired of Mrs. Hearty, his brow lined with
+anxiety.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not 'er," breathed Mrs. Hearty reassuringly.
+"It's bronchitis. You just light a fire, Joe."</p>
+
+<p>Almost before the words were out of her mouth,
+Bindle had tip-toed to the door and was taking the
+stairs three at a time. Action was the one thing he
+desired. He determined that, the fire once laid, he
+would set to work to clean out the saucepan he had
+burned. Somehow that saucepan seemed to bite deep
+into his conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor came, saw, and confirmed Mrs. Hearty's
+diagnosis. Having prescribed a steam-kettle, inhalations
+of eucalyptus, slop food, warmth and air, he left,
+promising to look in again on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the stairs, he was waylaid by Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't&mdash;&mdash;" he began eagerly, then paused.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor, a young, fair man, looked down
+from his six feet one, at Bindle's anxious enquiring
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to be alarmed about," he said cheerfully.
+"I'll run in again to-morrow, and we'll soon have her
+about again."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Bindle, drawing a sigh of
+obvious relief. "Funny thing," he muttered as he
+closed the door on the doctor, "that you never seems
+to think o' dyin' till somebody gets ill. I'm glad 'e's
+a big 'un," he added inconsequently. "Mrs. B. likes
+'em big," and he returned to the kitchen, where he
+proceeded to scrape the stove and scour the saucepan,
+whilst Mrs. Hearty continued to minister to her
+afflicted sister.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's thoughts seemed to be preoccupied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+with her domestic responsibilities. From time to time
+she issued her instructions.</p>
+
+<p>"Make Joe up a bed on the couch in the parlour,"
+she murmured hoarsely. "I'd keep him awake if he
+slept here."</p>
+
+<p>"Try an' get Mrs. Coppen to come in to get Joe's
+dinner," she said, a few minutes later.</p>
+
+<p>And yet again she requested her sister to watch the
+bread-pan to see that the supply was kept up. "Joe
+eats a lot of bread," she added.</p>
+
+<p>To all these remarks, Mrs. Hearty returned the same
+reply. "Don't you worry, Lizzie. You just get to
+sleep."</p>
+
+<p>That night Bindle worked long and earnestly that
+things might be as Mrs. Bindle had left them; but
+fate was against him. Nothing he was able to do could
+remove from the inside of the saucepan the damning
+evidences of his guilt. The stove, however, was an
+easier matter; but even that presented difficulties;
+for, as soon as he applied the moist blacklead, it dried
+with a hiss and the polishing brush, with the semi-circle
+of bristles at the end that reminded him of
+"'Earty's whiskers," instead of producing a polish,
+merely succeeded in getting burned. Furthermore, he
+had the misfortune to break a plate and a pie-dish.</p>
+
+<p>At the second smash, there was a tapping from the
+room above, and, on going to the door, he heard Mrs.
+Hearty wheezing an enquiry as to what it was that
+was broken.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an old galley-pot, Martha," he lied, and
+returned to gather up the pieces. These he wrapped in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+a newspaper and placed in the dresser-drawer, determined
+to carry them off next day. He was convinced
+that if Mrs. Bindle were about again before the merciful
+arrival of the dustman, she would inevitably subject
+the dust-bin to a rigorous examination.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock, Mrs. Hearty heavily descended the
+stairs and, as well as her breath would permit, she
+instructed him what to do during the watches of the
+night. Bindle listened earnestly. Never in his life
+had he made a linseed poultice, and the management of
+a steam-kettle was to him a new activity.</p>
+
+<p>When he heard about the bed on the couch, he
+looked the surprise he felt. Mrs. Bindle never allowed
+him even to sit on it. He resolutely vetoed the bed,
+however. He was going to sit up and "try an' bring
+'er round," as he expressed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she goin' to die, Martha?" he interrogated
+anxiously. That question seemed to obsess his
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hearty shook her head and beat her breast.
+She lacked the necessary oxygen to reply more
+explicitly.</p>
+
+<p>Having conducted Mrs. Hearty to the garden gate,
+he returned, closed and bolted the door, and proceeded
+upstairs. As he entered the bedroom, he was greeted
+by a harsh, bronchial cough that terrified him.</p>
+
+<p>"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired, with all the
+forced optimism of a man obviously anxious.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, looked at him for a
+moment, then, closing them again, shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"'As 'e sent you any physic?" he enquired.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again Mrs. Bindle shook her head, this time without
+opening her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle's heart sank. If the doctor didn't see the
+necessity for medicine, the case must indeed be desperate.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say, Joe?" she enquired in a hoarse
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of himself Bindle started slightly at the
+name. He had not heard it for many years.</p>
+
+<p>"'E said you're a-gettin' on fine," he lied.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I very ill? Is it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't got nothink much the matter with you,
+Lizzie," he replied lightly, in his anxiety to comfort,
+conveying the impression that she was in extreme
+danger. "Jest a bit of a chill."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I dying, Joe?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of its repetition, the name still seemed
+unfamiliar to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be dead-meat long before you, Lizzie," he
+said, and his failure to answer her question directly,
+confirmed Mrs. Bindle in her view that the end was
+very near.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm goin' to make you some arrowroot, now," he
+said, with an assurance in his voice that he was far
+from feeling. Ever since Mrs. Hearty had explained
+to him the mysteries of arrowroot-making,
+he had felt how absolutely unequal he was to the
+task.</p>
+
+<p>Through Mrs. Bindle's mind flashed a vision of milk
+allowed to boil over; but she felt herself too near the
+End to put her thoughts into words.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With uncertainty in his heart and anxiety in his eyes,
+Bindle descended to the kitchen. Selecting a small
+saucepan, which Mrs. Bindle kept for onions, he poured
+into it, as instructed by Mrs. Hearty, a breakfast-cupful
+of milk. This he placed upon the stove, which
+in one spot was manifesting a dull red tint. Bindle
+was thorough in all things, especially in the matter of
+stoking.</p>
+
+<p>He then opened the packet of arrowroot and poured
+it into a white pudding-basin. At the point where Mrs.
+Hearty was to have indicated the quantity of arrowroot
+to be used, she had been more than usually short
+of breath, with the result that Bindle did not catch the
+"two-tablespoonfuls" she had mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>He then turned to the stove to watch the milk, forgetting
+that Mrs. Hearty had warned him to mix the
+arrowroot into a thin paste with cold milk before
+pouring on to it the hot.</p>
+
+<p>As the milk manifested no particular excitement,
+Bindle drew from his pocket the evening paper which,
+up to now, he had forgotten. He promptly became
+absorbed in a story of the finding at Enfield of a girl's
+body bearing evidences of foul play.</p>
+
+<p>He was roused from his absorption by a violent hiss
+from the stove and, a moment later, he was holding
+aloft the saucepan, from which a Niagara of white
+foam streamed over the sides on to the angry stove
+beneath.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot a stink," he muttered, as he stepped back and
+turned towards the kitchen table. "Only jest in
+time, though," he added as, with spoon in one hand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+he proceeded to pour the boiling milk on to the arrowroot,
+assiduously stirring the while.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed," he muttered as, at the end of
+some five minutes, he stood regarding a peculiarly
+stodgy mass composed of a glutinous substance in
+which were white bubbles containing a fine powder.</p>
+
+<p>For several minutes he stood regarding it doubtfully,
+and then, with the air of a man who desires to make
+assurance doubly sure, he spooned the mass out on to
+a plate and once more stood regarding it.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks as if it wants a few currants," he murmured
+dubiously, as he lifted the plate from the table, preparatory
+to taking it up to Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought you somethink to eat, Lizzie," he
+announced, as he closed the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle shook her head, then opening her eyes,
+fixed them upon the strange viscid mass that Bindle
+extended to her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that smell?" she murmured wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"Smell," said Bindle, sniffing the air like a cat when
+fish is boiling. "I don't smell nothink, Lizzie."</p>
+
+<p>"You've burned something," she moaned feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, eat this," he said with forced cheerfulness,
+"then you'll feel better."</p>
+
+<p>Once more Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, gazed at
+the mass, then shaking her head, turned her face to
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>For five minutes, Bindle strove to persuade her.
+Finally, recognising defeat, he placed the plate on a
+chair by the bedside and, seating himself on a little
+green-painted box, worn at the edges so that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+original white wood showed through, he proceeded
+to look the helplessness he felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired at length,
+holding his breath eagerly as he waited for the reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle shook her head drearily, and his heart
+sank.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, he remembered Mrs. Hearty's earnest
+exhortation to keep the steam-kettle in operation.
+Once more he descended to the kitchen and, whilst
+the kettle was boiling, he occupied himself with scraping
+the heat-flaked milk from the top of the stove.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout that night he laboured at the steam-kettle,
+or sat gazing helplessly at Mrs. Bindle, despair
+clutching at his heart, impotence dogging his footsteps.
+From time to time he would offer her the now cold slab
+of arrowroot, or else enquire if she were feeling
+better; but Mrs. Bindle refused the one and denied
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>With the dawn came inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like a kipper for breakfast, Lizzie?" he
+enquired, hope shining in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This time Mrs. Bindle not only shook her head, but
+manifested by her expression such a repugnance that
+he felt repulsed. The very thought of kippers made
+his own mouth water and, recalling that Mrs. Bindle
+was particularly partial to them, he realised that her
+condition must be extremely grave.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after nine, Mrs. Hearty arrived and insisted
+on preparing breakfast for Bindle. Having despatched
+him to his work she proceeded to tidy-up.</p>
+
+<p>After the doctor had called, Mrs. Bindle once more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+sought news as to her condition. This time Mrs.
+Hearty, obviously keen on reassuring the invalid,
+succeeded also in confirming her morbid convictions.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the plate containing Bindle's conception
+of arrowroot for an invalid, Mrs. Hearty had at
+first manifested curiosity, then, on discovering the
+constituent parts of the unsavoury-looking mess, she
+had collapsed upon the green-painted box, wheezing
+and heaving until her gasps for breath caused Mrs.
+Bindle to open her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a week, Bindle and Mrs. Hearty devoted
+themselves to the sick woman. Every morning Bindle
+was late for work, and when he could get home he
+spent more than half of his dinner-hour by Mrs.
+Bindle's bedside, asking the inevitable question as
+to whether she were feeling better.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, he got home as fast as bus, train or
+tram could take him, and not once did he go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole period, Mrs. Bindle was as docile
+and amenable to reason as a poor relation. Never
+had she been so subdued. From Mrs. Hearty she took
+the food that was prepared for her, and acquiesced
+in the remedies administered. Amidst a perfect
+tornado of wheezes and gaspings, Mrs. Hearty had
+confided to Bindle that he had better refrain from
+invalid cookery.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing that either the doctor or Mrs. Hearty could
+say would convince Mrs. Bindle that she was long for
+this world. The very cheerfulness of those around
+her seemed proof positive that they were striving to
+inspire her with a hope they were far from feeling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In her contemplation of Eternity, Mrs. Bindle forgot
+her kitchen, and the probable desolation Bindle was
+wreaking. Smells of burning, no matter how pungent,
+left her unmoved, and Bindle, finding that for the
+first time in his life immunity surrounded him, proceeded
+from one gastronomic triumph to another.
+He burned sausages in the frying-pan, boiled dried
+haddock in a porcelain-lined milk-saucepan and, not
+daring to confuse the flavour of sausages and fish, had
+hit upon the novel plan of cooking a brace of bloaters
+upon the top of the stove itself.</p>
+
+<p>Culinary enthusiasm seized him, and he invented
+several little dishes of his own. Some were undoubted
+successes, notably one made up of tomatoes, fried
+onions and little strips of bacon; but he met his
+Waterloo in a dish composed of fried onions and eggs.
+The eggs were much quicker off the mark than the
+onions, and won in a canter. He quickly realised
+that swift decision was essential. It was a case either
+of raw onions and cooked eggs, or cooked onions and
+cindered eggs.</p>
+
+<p>Never had such scents risen from Mrs. Bindle's stove
+to the receptive nostrils of the gods; yet through
+it all Mrs. Bindle made neither protest nor enquiry.</p>
+
+<p>Even Mrs. Hearty was appalled by the state in which
+she found the kitchen each morning.</p>
+
+<p>"My word, Joe!" she would wheeze. "You don't
+'alf make a mess," and she would gaze from the stove
+to the table, and from the table to the sink, all of
+which bore manifest evidence of Bindle's culinary
+activities.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle, however, seemed oblivious of the cares
+of this world in her anxiety not to make the journey
+to the next. As her breath became more constricted,
+so her alarm increased.</p>
+
+<p>In her eyes there was a mute appeal that Bindle,
+for one, found it impossible to ignore. Instinctively
+he sensed what was troubling her, and he lost no
+opportunity of striving to reassure her by saying that
+she would be out and about again before she could say
+"Jack Robinson."</p>
+
+<p>Still there lurked in her eyes a Great Fear. She had
+never before had bronchitis, and the difficulty she
+experienced in breathing seemed to her morbidly
+suggestive of approaching death. Although she had
+never seen anyone die, she had in her own mind associated
+death with a terrible struggle for breath.</p>
+
+<p>Once when Bindle suggested that she might like
+to see Mr. MacFie, the minister of the Alton Road
+Chapel, Mrs. Bindle turned upon him such an agonised
+look that he instinctively shrank back.</p>
+
+<p>"Might-a-been Ole Nick 'isself," he later confided
+to Mrs. Hearty, "and me a-thinkin' to please 'er."</p>
+
+<p>"She's afraid o' dying, Joe," wheezed Mrs. Hearty
+"Alf was just the same when 'e 'ad the flu."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle spent money with the recklessness of a desperate
+man. He bought strange and inappropriate
+foods in the hope that they would tempt Mrs. Bindle's
+appetite. No matter where his work led him, he was
+always on the look out for some dainty, which he
+would purchase and carry home in triumph to Mrs.
+Hearty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You ain't 'alf a joke, Joe," she wheezed one evening,
+sinking down upon a chair and proceeding to heave
+and billow with suppressed laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle looked lugubriously at the yellow pie-dish
+into which he had just emptied about a quart of whelks,
+purchased in the Mile End Road.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't they good for bronchitis?" he enquired with
+a crestfallen look.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night it was pig's feet," gasped Mrs. Hearty,
+"and the night before saveloys," and she proceeded
+to beat her chest with a grubby fist.</p>
+
+<p>After that, Bindle had fallen back upon less debatable
+things. He had purchased illustrated papers, flowers,
+a quarter of a pound of chocolate creams, which had
+become a little wilted, owing to the crowded state of
+the tramcar in which he had returned home that night.</p>
+
+<p>During those anxious days, he collected a strange
+assortment of articles, perishable and otherwise. The
+thing he could not do was to go home without some
+token of his solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>One evening he acquired a vividly coloured oleograph
+in a gilt frame, which depicted a yawning grave, whilst
+in the distance an angel was to be seen carrying a very
+material-looking spirit to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's reception of the gift was a wild look
+of terror, followed by a fit of coughing that frightened
+Bindle almost as much as it did her.</p>
+
+<p>"Funny," he remarked later as he carried the picture
+out of the room. "I thought she'd 'ave liked an
+angel."</p>
+
+<p>It was Bindle who eventually solved the problem of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+how to convey comfort to Mrs. Bindle's distraught
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>One evening he accompanied the doctor to her room.
+After the customary questions and answers between
+doctor and patient, Bindle suddenly burst out.</p>
+
+<p>"I got a bet on with the doctor, Lizzie."</p>
+
+<p>From an anxious contemplation of the doctor's
+face, where she had been striving to read the worst,
+Mrs. Bindle turned her eyes to Bindle's cheery countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's bet me a quid you'll be cookin' my dinner this
+day week," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the announcement on Mrs. Bindle
+was startling. A new light sprang into her eyes, her
+cheeks became faintly pink as she turned to the doctor
+a look of interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true, Mrs. Bindle, and your husband's going
+to lose, that is if you're careful and don't take a
+chill."</p>
+
+<p>Within ten minutes Mrs. Bindle had fallen into a
+deep sleep, having first ordered Bindle to put
+another blanket on the bed&mdash;she was going to take
+no risks.</p>
+
+<p>"The first time I ever knowed Mrs. B. 'ear me talk
+about bettin' without callin' me a 'eathen," remarked
+Bindle, as he saw the doctor out. "Wonders'll never
+cease," he murmured, as he returned to the kitchen.
+"One o' these days she'll be askin' me to put a shillin'
+on both ways. Funny things, women!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>Bindle's plot with the doctor did more to expedite
+Mrs. Bindle's recovery than all the care that had been
+lavished upon her. From the hour she awakened
+from a long and refreshing sleep, she began to manifest
+interest in her surroundings. Her appetite improved
+and her sense of smell became more acute, so that
+Bindle had to select for his dishes materials giving
+out a less pungent odour.</p>
+
+<p>He took the additional precaution of doing his cooking
+with the window and scullery-door open to their fullest
+extent.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle, on her part, took pleasure in planning
+the meals she imagined Mrs. Coppen was cooking. She
+had not been told that the charwoman was in prison
+for assaulting a policeman with a gin bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll 'ave to look out now, Joe," admonished
+Mrs. Hearty on one occasion as she entered the kitchen
+and gazed down at the table upon which Bindle was
+gathering together materials for what he described as
+a "top 'ole stoo." "If Lizzie was to catch you making
+all this mess she&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Hearty finished in a series
+of wheezes.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when Bindle's menu consisted of corned-beef,
+piccalilli and beer, to be followed by pancakes
+of his own making, the blow fell.</p>
+
+<p>The corned beef, piccalilli and beer were excellent
+and he had enjoyed them; but the pancakes were to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+be his chef d'[oe]uvre. His main object in selecting
+pancakes was, as he explained to Mrs. Hearty, "that
+they don't stink while cookin'."</p>
+
+<p>From his sister-in-law he had obtained a general
+idea of how to proceed. She had even gone so far as
+to assist in mixing the batter.</p>
+
+<p>The fat was bubbling merrily in the frying-pan as
+he poured in sufficient liquid for at least three pancakes.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't got much to learn about cookin', old
+cock," he muttered, as he watched the fat bubble darkly
+round the cream-coloured batter.</p>
+
+<p>After a lapse of some five minutes he decided that
+the underside was sufficiently done. Then came the
+problem of how to turn the pancake. He had heard
+that expert cooks could toss them in such a way that
+they fell into the pan again on the reverse side; but
+he was too wise to take such a risk, particularly as
+the upper portion of the pancake was still in a liquid
+state.</p>
+
+<p>He determined upon more cautious means of achieving
+his object. With the aid of a tablespoon and a
+fish-slice, he managed to get the pancake reversed.
+It is true that it had a crumpled appearance, and a
+considerable portion of the loose batter had fallen on
+to the stove; still he regarded it as an achievement.</p>
+
+<p>Just as he was contemplating the turning of the
+pancake on to a plate, a knock came at the front-door.
+On answering it, Bindle found a butcher's boy, who
+insisted that earlier in the day he had left a pound
+of beef-steak at No. 7, instead of at No. 17. The lad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+was confident, and refused to accept Bindle's assurance
+that he had neither seen nor heard of the missing
+meat.</p>
+
+<p>The argument waxed fierce and eventually developed
+into personalities, mainly from the butcher-boy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Bindle remembered his pancake. Banging
+the door in the lad's face, he dashed along the
+passage and opened the kitchen door. For a second
+he stood appalled, the pancake seemed to have eaten
+up every scrap of oxygen the room contained, and in
+its place had sent forth a suffocating smell of burning.</p>
+
+<p>Realising that in swift action alone lay his salvation,
+Bindle dashed across the room, opened the door leading
+to the scullery and then the scullery door itself. He
+threw up the window and, with water streaming from
+his eyes, approached the stove. A blackened ruin
+was all that remained of his pancake.</p>
+
+<p>Picking up the frying-pan he carried it over to the
+sink, where he stood regarding the charred mass.
+Suddenly he recollected that he had left open the
+kitchen-door leading into the passage. Dropping the
+frying-pan, he made a dash to close it; but he was
+too late. There, with her shoulders encased in a red
+flannel petticoat, stood Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"My Gawd!" he muttered tragically.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a minute she stood as if turned to stone.
+Then without a word she closed the door behind her,
+walked to the centre of the room, and stood absorbing
+the scene of ruin and desolation about her, Bindle
+backing into the furthest corner.</p>
+
+<p>She regarded the stove, generously flaked with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+overflow of Bindle's culinary enthusiasm, glanced
+up at the discoloured dish-covers over the mantelpiece,
+the brightness of which had always been her special
+pride.</p>
+
+<p>On to the dresser her eye wandered, and was met
+by a riot of dirty dishes and plates, salmon tins, empty
+beer bottles, crusts of bread, reinforced by an old boot.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen-table held her attention for fully half
+a minute. The torn newspaper covering it was stained
+to every shade of black and brown and grey, the whole
+being composed by a large yellow splotch, where a
+cup of very liquid mustard had come to grief.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this informal tablecloth was strewn a medley
+of unwashed plates, knives and forks, bread-crumbs,
+potato-peelings and fish-bones.</p>
+
+<p>Having gazed her fill, and still ominously silent, she
+proceeded to make a thorough tour of inspection,
+Bindle watching her with distended eyes, fear clutching
+at his heart.</p>
+
+<p>At the sink she stood for some seconds steadfastly
+regarding Bindle's pancake. Her lips had now entirely
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The crisis came when she opened the dresser drawer
+and found the pie-dish and plate he had broken, but
+had forgotten to take away. Screwing up the packet
+again, she turned swiftly and hurled it at him with all
+her strength.</p>
+
+<p>Wholly unprepared, Bindle made a vain effort to
+dodge; but the package got him on the side of the
+head, and a red line above his ear showed that Mrs.
+Bindle had drawn first blood.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You fiend!" she cried. "Oh, you&mdash;&mdash;!" and
+dropping into the chair by the table she collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the kitchen was ringing with the sounds of
+her hysterical laughter. Bindle watched her like one
+hypnotised.</p>
+
+<p>As if to save his reason, a knock came at the outer
+door. He side-stepped swiftly and made a dash for
+the door giving access to the hall. A moment later
+he was gazing with relief at Mrs. Hearty's pale blue
+tam o' shanter.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow is she, Joe?" she wheezed.</p>
+
+<p>Then as he stepped aside to allow Mrs. Hearty to
+precede him into the kitchen, Bindle found voice.
+"I think she's better," he mumbled.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>"Pleasant company, you are," snapped Mrs.
+Bindle, as she made an onslaught upon
+the kitchen fire, jabbing it viciously with a
+short steel poker.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle looked up from the newspaper he was reading.
+It was the third attack upon the kitchen fire within
+the space of five minutes, and he recognised the
+portents&mdash;a storm was brewing.</p>
+
+<p>"I might as well be on a desert island for all the
+company you are," she continued. "Here am I
+alone all day long with no one to speak to, and when
+you come home you just sit reading the horse-racing
+news in the paper."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot jer like to talk about?" he enquired, allowing
+the paper to drop to the floor opposite him.</p>
+
+<p>She sniffed angrily and threw the poker into the
+ash-pan.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't readin' about racin'," he continued pacifically.
+"I was jest readin' about a cove wot went orf
+with another cove's missis, 'is best overcoat and two
+chickens."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Stop it!" She stood over him, her lips compressed,
+her eyes hard and steely, as if meditating violence, then,
+turning suddenly, she walked swiftly across to the
+dresser and pulled out the left-hand drawer. Taking
+from it her bonnet, she put it on her head and proceeded
+to tie the strings beneath her chin.</p>
+
+<p>From behind the kitchen door she unhooked a brown
+mackintosh, into which she struggled.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' out?" he enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she replied, as she tore open the door, "and
+perhaps I'll never come back again," and with a bang
+that shook the house she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>She took a tram to Hammersmith on her way to
+see her niece, Millie Dixon. She was angry; the day
+had been one of continual annoyances and vexations.
+Entering the car she buried her elbows deep into the
+redundant figure of a woman who was also endeavouring
+to enter.</p>
+
+<p>Once inside, the woman began to inform the car
+what she thought of "scraggy 'Uns with faces like
+a drop of vinegar on the edge of a knife."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way you gets cancer," she continued,
+as she stroked the left side of her ample bust. "People
+with elbows like that should 'ave 'em padded," and
+Mrs. Bindle was conscious that the car was with her
+antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle next proceeded to quarrel with the conductor
+about the fare, which had gone up a halfpenny,
+and she ended by threatening to report him for not
+setting her down between the scheduled stopping-places.</p>
+
+<p>"She's lost a Bradbury and found the water-rate,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+remarked the conductor, as he turned once more to
+the occupants of the car after watching Mrs. Bindle
+alight.</p>
+
+<p>The fat woman responded to the pleasantry by
+expressing her views on "them wot don't know 'ow
+to be'ave theirselves like ladies."</p>
+
+<p>With Mrs. Bindle, the lure of Joseph the Second
+was strong within her. When her loneliness became
+too great for endurance, or the domestic atmosphere
+manifested signs of a greater voltage than the normal,
+her thoughts instinctively flew to the blue-eyed nephew,
+who slobbered and cooed at her and raised his chubby
+fists in meaningless gestures. Then the hunger within
+her would be appeased, until some chance mention of
+Bindle's name would awaken her self-pity.</p>
+
+<p>She found Millie alone with Joseph the Second asleep
+in his cot beside her. As she feasted her gaze upon
+the eye-shut babe, Mrs. Bindle was conscious of a
+feeling of disappointment. She wanted to babble
+baby-talk, and gaze into those filmy blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her aunt's protests, Millie made a cup of
+tea, explaining as she did so that Charley was staying
+late at the office.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good cake, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle a few
+minutes later, as she delicately cut another small
+square from the slice of home-made cake upon the
+plate before her. In her eyes there was a look which
+was a tribute from one good cook to another. "Who
+gave you the recipe?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was all through Uncle Joe," said Millie. "He
+was always saying what a wonderful cook you are,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+Aunt Lizzie, and that if you didn't feed pussy he
+wouldn't purr," she laughed. "You know what funny
+things he says," she added parenthetically&mdash;"so I
+took lessons. You see," she added quaintly, "I
+wanted Charley to be very happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty lot of purring there is in our house," was
+Mrs. Bindle's grim comment, as she raised her cup-and-saucer
+from the table upon the finger-tips of
+her left hand and, with little finger awkwardly
+crooked, lifted the cup with her disengaged hand
+and proceeded to sip the tea with Victorian
+refinement.</p>
+
+<p>"How is Uncle Joe?" asked Millie. "I wish he
+had come."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't talk to me about your uncle," cried
+Mrs. Bindle peevishly. "He's sitting at home smoking
+a filthy pipe and reading the horse-racing news. I
+might be dirt under his feet for all the notice he takes
+of me."</p>
+
+<p>The grievances of the day had been cumulative with
+Mrs. Bindle, and the burden was too heavy to be borne
+in silence. Beginning with a bad tomato among the
+pound she had bought that morning at Mr. Hearty's
+Fulham shop, her troubles had piled up one upon
+another to the point when she found Joseph the Second
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She had burned one of her best hem-stitched handkerchiefs
+whilst ironing it, the milk had "turned"
+on account of the thunder in the air and, to crown the
+morning's tragedies, she had burned a saucepan owing
+to the dustman coming at an inconvenient moment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's never been a proper husband to me," she
+sniffed ominously.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Aunt Lizzie," said Millie gently, as she leaned
+forward and placed her hand upon Mrs. Bindle's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"He humiliates me before other people and&mdash;and
+sometimes I wish I was dead, Millie, God forgive me."
+Her voice broke as she stifled a sob.</p>
+
+<p>Millie's large, grave eyes were full of sympathy,
+mixed with a little wonder. She could not understand
+how anyone could find "Uncle Joe" other than
+adorable.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since I married him he's been the same,"
+continued Mrs. Bindle, the flood-gates of self-pity
+opening wide under the influence of Millie's gentleness
+and sympathy. "He tries to make me look small
+before other people and&mdash;and I've always been a good
+wife to him."</p>
+
+<p>Again she sniffed, and Millie squeezed her arm
+affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"He's just the same with Mr.&mdash;with your father,"
+Mrs. Bindle corrected herself. "Why he stands it I
+don't know. If I was a man I'd hit him, that I would,
+and hard too," she added as if to allow of no doubt in
+her niece's mind as to the nature of the punishment
+she would administer. "I'd show him; but Mr.
+Hearty's so good and patient and gentle." Mrs.
+Bindle produced a handkerchief, and proceeded to
+dab the corners of her eyes, although there was no
+indication of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Lizzie," protested Millie gently, "I'm
+sure he doesn't mean to make you&mdash;to humiliate you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+She felt that loyalty to her beloved Uncle Joe
+demanded that she should defend him. "You see,
+he&mdash;he loves a joke, and he's very good to&mdash;to, oh,
+everybody! Charley just loves Uncle Joe," she
+added, as if that settled the matter as far as she
+were concerned.</p>
+
+<p>"Look how he goes on about the chapel," continued
+Mrs. Bindle, fearful lest her niece's sympathy should
+be snatched from her. "I wonder God doesn't strike
+him dead. I'm sure I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Strike him dead!" cried Millie in horror. "Oh,
+Aunt Lizzie! you don't mean that, you couldn't."
+She paused, seeming to bring the whole twelve months
+of her matronhood to the examination of the problem.
+"I know he's very naughty sometimes," she added
+sagely, "but he loves you, Aunt Lizzie. He thinks
+that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Love!" cried Mrs. Bindle with all the scorn of
+a woman who has no intention of being comforted.
+"He loves nothing but his food and his low companions.
+He shames me before the neighbours, talking that
+familiar with common men. When I'm out with him he
+shouts out to bus-conductors, or whistles at policemen,
+or winks at&mdash;at hussies in the street." She paused
+in the catalogue of Bindle's crimes, whilst Millie turned
+her head to hide the smile she could not quite
+repress.</p>
+
+<p>She herself had been with Bindle when he had called
+out to his bus-conductor friends, and whistled under
+his breath when passing a policeman, "If You Want
+to Know the Time Ask a Policeman"; but he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+never winked at girls when he had been with her; of
+that she was sure.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Aunt Lizzie, he knows so many people,
+and they all like him and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Only common people, like chauffeurs and workmen,"
+was the retort. "When I'm out with him I sometimes
+want to sink through the ground with shame. He
+lets them call him 'Joe,' and of course they don't
+respect me." Again she sniffed ominously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll speak to him," said Millie with a wise little air
+that she had assumed since her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak to him!" cried Mrs. Bindle scornfully.
+"Might as well speak to a brick wall. I've spoken
+to him until I'm tired, and what does he do? Laughs
+at me and says I'm as&mdash;&mdash;" she paused, as if finding
+difficulty in bringing herself to give Bindle's actual
+expression&mdash;"says I'm as holy as ointment, if you know
+what that means."</p>
+
+<p>"But he doesn't mean to be unkind, Aunt Lizzie,
+I'm sure he doesn't," protested Millie loyally. "He
+calls Boy&mdash;I mean Charley," she corrected herself with
+a little blush, "all sorts of names," and she laughed
+at some recollection of her own. "Don't you think,
+Aunt Lizzie&mdash;&mdash;" she paused, conscious that she was
+approaching delicate ground. "Don't you think
+that if you and Uncle Joe were both to try and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;"
+she stopped, looking across at her aunt
+anxiously, her lower lip indrawn and her eyes
+gravely wide.</p>
+
+<p>"Try and what?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, a hardness
+creeping into her voice at the thought that anyone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+could see any mitigating circumstance in Bindle's
+treatment of her.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that if perhaps&mdash;I mean," hesitated
+Millie, "that if you both tried very hard to&mdash;to, not
+to hurt each other&mdash;&mdash;" again she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I've never said anything to him that all
+the world might not hear," retorted Mrs. Bindle, with
+the unction of the righteous, "although he's always
+saying things to me that make me hot with shame,
+married woman though I am."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Lizzie," persisted Millie, clasping Mrs.
+Bindle's arm with both hands, and looking appealingly
+up into her face, "won't you try, just for my sake,
+pleeeeeease," she coaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"I've tried until I'm tired of trying," was the ungracious
+retort. "I moil and toil, inch and pinch,
+work day and night to mend his clothes and get his
+food ready, and this is what I get for it. He makes
+me a laughing-stock, talks about me behind my back.
+Oh, I know!" she added hastily, as Millie made a sign
+of dissent. "He can't deceive me. He wants to
+bring me down to his own level of wickedness, then
+he'll be happy; but he shan't," she cried, the Daughter
+of the Lord manifesting herself. "I'll kill myself
+first. He shall never have that pleasure, no one
+shall ever be able to say that I let him drag me
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always done my duty by him," she continued,
+returning to the threadbare phrase that was ever
+present in her mind. "I've worked morning, noon
+and night to try and keep him respectable, and see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+how he treats me. I'm worse off than a servant, I
+tell him so and what does he do?" she demanded.
+"Laughs at me," she cried shrilly, answering her own
+question, "and humiliates me before the neighbours.
+Gets the children to call after me, makes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Lizzie! You mustn't say that," cried
+Millie in distress. "I'm sure Uncle Joe would never
+do such a thing. He couldn't," she added with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they do it," retorted Mrs. Bindle, conscious
+of a feeling that possibly she had gone too far; "only
+yesterday they did it."</p>
+
+<p>"What did they say?" enquired Millie curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"They said," she paused as if hesitating to repeat
+what the youth of Fenton Street had called after her.
+Then, as if determined to convict Bindle of all the
+sins possible, she continued, "They called after me
+all the way up Fenton Street&mdash;&mdash;" again she paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aunt Lizzie."</p>
+
+<p>"They called 'Mrs. Bindle turns a spindle.'"</p>
+
+<p>Millie bent quickly forward that her involuntary
+smile might not be detected.</p>
+
+<p>"They never call out after him," Mrs. Bindle added,
+as if that in itself were conclusive proof of Bindle's
+guilt. "And now I must be going, Millie," and she
+rose and once more bent down to gaze where Joseph
+the Second slept the sleep of an easy conscience and
+a good digestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless his little heart," she murmured, for the
+moment forgetting her own troubles in the contemplation
+of the sleeping babe. "I hope he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+doesn't grow up like his uncle," she added, her
+thoughts rushing back precipitately to their customary
+channel.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to have a talk with Uncle Joe," said
+Millie, as she followed her aunt along the passage,
+"and then&mdash;&mdash;" she paused.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd talk the hind leg off a donkey before you'd
+make any impression on him," was the ungracious
+retort. "Good night, Millie, I'm glad you're getting
+on with your cooking," and Mrs. Bindle passed out
+into the night to the solitude of her own thoughts,
+populated exclusively by Bindle and his shortcomings.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't told Charley, Uncle Joe, so be careful,"
+whispered Millie, as Bindle hung up his hat in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"'Aven't told 'im wot, Millie?"</p>
+
+<p>"That&mdash;that&mdash;&mdash;" she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I get you Steve," he cried, with a knowing wink,
+"you ain't told 'im 'ow you're goin' to make yer
+Aunt Lizzie the silent wife of Fulham."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Uncle Joe," she admonished with pouting
+lips, "you promised. You will be careful, won't
+you?" She had spent two hours the previous night
+coaching Bindle in the part he was to play.</p>
+
+<p>"Reg'lar dove I am to-night," he said cheerily.
+"I could lay an egg, only I don't know wot colour it
+ought to be."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Millie gazed at him for a few seconds in quizzical
+doubt, then, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders,
+and a pout that was very popular with Charley, she
+turned and led the way into the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Charley Dixon was doing his best to make conversation
+with his aunt-in-law; but Mrs. Bindle's monosyllabic
+methods proved a serious obstacle.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we'll have supper," cried Millie, after Bindle
+had greeted Charley and gazed a little doubtfully at
+Mrs. Bindle. He seemed on the point of making some
+remark; but apparently thought better of it, instead
+he turned to admire an ornament on the mantelpiece.
+He had remembered just in time.</p>
+
+<p>Millie had spread herself upon the supper. There
+was a small cold chicken that seemed desirous of
+shrinking within itself; a salad in a glass bowl, with
+a nickel-silver fork and spoon adorned with blue china
+handles; a plate of ham well garnished with parsley;
+a beef-steak and kidney pie, cold, also garnished with
+parsley; some pressed beef and tongue, of a thinness
+that advertised the professional hand which had cut it.</p>
+
+<p>On the sideboard was an infinity of tarts, blanc-mange,
+stewed fruit and custard. With all the
+recklessness of a young housewife, Millie had prepared
+for four what would have been ample for fourteen.</p>
+
+<p>It was this fact that first attracted Mrs. Bindle's
+attention. Her keen eyes missed nothing. She examined
+the knives and spoons, identifying them as wedding
+presents. She lifted the silver pepper-castor, a trifle,
+light as air, examined the texture of the tablecloth
+and felt the napkins with an appraising thumb and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+forefinger, and mentally deprecated the lighting of
+the two pink candles, in silver candlesticks with yellow
+shades, in the centre of the table.</p>
+
+<p>Millie fluttered about, acutely conscious of her
+responsibilities and flushed with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope&mdash;I hope," she began, addressing her aunt.
+"I&mdash;I hope you will like it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must have worked very hard, Millie," said
+Mrs. Bindle, an unusual gentleness in her voice, whereat
+Millie flushed.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle and Charley were soon at work upon the beef-steak
+and kidney pie, hot potatoes and beans. Bindle
+had nearly fallen at the first hurdle. In the heat of
+an argument with Charley as to what was the matter
+with the Chelsea football team, he had indiscreetly
+put a large piece of potato into his mouth without
+realising its temperature. A look of agony overspread
+his features. He was just in the act of making a
+preliminary forward motion to return the potato from
+whence it came, when Charley, with a presence of
+mind that would have brought tears to Bindle's eyes,
+had they not already been there, indicated the glass
+of beer in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>With a swoop Bindle seized it, raised it to his lips,
+and cooled the heated tuber. Pulling his red silk
+handkerchief from his breast-pocket, he mopped up
+the tears just as Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make me laugh, Charley," he cried with
+inspiration, "or I'll choke," at which Charley laughed
+in a way that proved him entirely devoid of histrionic
+talent.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll do as much for you one o' these days, Charley,"
+Bindle whispered, looking reproachfully at the remains
+of the potato that had betrayed him. "My Gawd!
+It was 'ot," he muttered under his breath. "Look
+out for yourself an' 'ave beer 'andy."</p>
+
+<p>He turned suddenly to Mrs. Bindle. In his heart
+there was an uncharitable hope that she too might
+be caught in the toils from which he had just escaped;
+but Mrs. Bindle ate like a book on etiquette. She held
+her knife and fork at the extreme end of the handles,
+her elbows pressed well into her sides, and literally
+toyed with her food.</p>
+
+<p>After each mouthful, she raised her napkin to her
+lips, giving the impression that it was in constant
+movement, either to or from her lips.</p>
+
+<p>She took no table risks. She saw to it that every
+piece of food was carefully attached to the fork before
+she raised it from the plate, and never did fork carry
+a lighter load than hers. After each journey, both knife
+and fork were laid on her plate, the napkin&mdash;Mrs. Bindle
+referred to it as a serviette&mdash;raised to her unsoiled lips,
+and she touched neither knife nor fork again until her
+jaws had entirely ceased working.</p>
+
+<p>Between her visits to the kitchen, Millie laboured
+desperately to inveigle her aunt into conversation;
+but although Mrs. Bindle possessed much religious
+and domestic currency, she had no verbal small change.</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon, Millie had exhausted domesticity
+and herself alike&mdash;and there had been Joseph
+the Second. Mrs. Bindle did not read, they had no
+common friends, she avoided the pictures, and what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+she did see in the newspapers she so disapproved of
+as to close that as a possible channel of conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Lizzie," cried Millie in desperation for something
+to say, "you aren't making a good supper."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm doing very nicely, thank you, Millie," said
+Mrs. Bindle, who in a quarter of an hour had managed
+to envelop about two square inches of ham and three
+shreds of lettuce.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't like the ham, Aunt Lizzie," protested
+the hospitable Millie; "have some pie."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very nice, thank you, Millie," was the prim
+reply. "I'm enjoying it," and she proceeded to dissect a
+piece of lettuce to a size that even a "prunes and prisms"
+mouth might have taken without inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley," cried Millie presently. "I won't have
+you talking football with Uncle Joe. Talk to Aunt
+Lizzie."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later she realized her mistake. Bindle
+returned to his plate, Charley looked at his aunt
+doubtfully, and conversation lay slain.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," cried Millie who, at the end of five minutes,
+thought she must either say something, or scream.
+"That's Joey, run up and see, Charley, there's a
+dear"&mdash;she knew it was not Joey.</p>
+
+<p>Charley rose dutifully, and once more silence descended
+upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Lizzie, you <i>are</i> making a poor meal," cried
+Millie, genuinely distressed, as Mrs. Bindle placed
+her knife and fork at the "all clear" angle, although
+she had eaten less than half what her plate contained.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've done very nicely, thank you, Millie, and I've
+enjoyed it."</p>
+
+<p>Millie sighed. Her eyes wandered from the heavily-laden
+table to the sideboard, and she groaned in spirit.
+In spite of what Bindle and Charley had done, and
+were doing, there seemed such a lot that required to
+be eaten, and she wondered whether Charley would very
+much mind having cold meat, blanc-mange and jam
+tarts for the rest of the week.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't him, Millie," said Charley, re-entering
+the room, and returning to his plate with the air of
+one determined to make up for the time he had lost
+in parental solicitude, whilst Bindle pushed his own
+plate from him as a sign that, so far as the first round
+was concerned, he had nothing more to say.</p>
+
+<p>"You're very quiet to-night, Uncle Joe," said Millie,
+the soul of hospitality within her already weeping bitter
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Me?" cried Bindle, starting and looking about
+him. "I ain't quiet, Millie," and then he relapsed
+once more into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Charley did not seem to notice anything unusual.
+In his gentle, good-natured way he hoped that Millie
+would not again ask him to talk to Aunt Lizzie.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle partook, no other word adequately
+describes the action, of an open jam tart with the aid
+of a spoon and fork, from time to time sipping daintily
+from her glass of lemonade; but she refused all else.
+She had made an excellent meal, she repeatedly assured
+Millie, and had enjoyed it.</p>
+
+<p>Millie found comfort in plying Bindle with dainties.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+He had received no orders to curtail his appetite, so
+he had decided in his own idiom to "let 'em all come"&mdash;and
+they came, tarts and turnovers, fruit-salad and
+blanc-mange, custard and jelly. By the time the
+cheese and biscuits had arrived, he was forced to
+lean back in his chair and confess himself vanquished.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you was to pay me," he said, as he shook a
+regretful head.</p>
+
+<p>After the meal, they returned to the drawing-room.
+Millie showed Mrs. Bindle an album of coloured postcards
+they had collected during their honeymoon, whilst
+Charley wandered about like a restless spirit, missing
+his after-dinner pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't we goin' to smoke?" Bindle had whispered
+hoarsely, as they entered the drawing-room; but
+Charley shook a sad and resigned head.</p>
+
+<p>"She mightn't like it," he whispered back, so Bindle
+seated himself in the corner of a plush couch, and
+wondered how long it would be before Mrs. Bindle
+made a move to go home.</p>
+
+<p>Millie was trying her utmost to make the postcards
+last as long as possible. Charley had paused beside
+her in his restless strolling about the room, and proceeded
+to recall unimportant happenings at the places
+pictured.</p>
+
+<p>At length the photographs were exhausted, and
+both Millie and Charley began to wonder what was
+to take their place, when Mrs. Bindle rose, announcing
+that she must be going. Millie pressed her to stay,
+and strove to stifle the thanksgiving in her heart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+whilst Charley began to count the minutes before he
+would be able to "light up."</p>
+
+<p>The business of parting, however, occupied time,
+and it was fully twenty minutes later that Bindle and
+Mrs. Bindle, accompanied by Charley and Millie,
+passed down the narrow little passage towards the
+hall door.</p>
+
+<p>Another five minutes were occupied in remarks
+upon the garden and how they had enjoyed themselves&mdash;and
+then the final goodnights were uttered.</p>
+
+<p>As his niece kissed him, Bindle muttered, "I been
+all right, ain't I, Millikins?" and she squeezed his
+arm reassuringly, at which he sighed his relief. The
+tortures he had suffered that evening were as nothing,
+provided Millie were happy.</p>
+
+<p>As the hall door closed, Charley struck a match
+and lighted his pipe. Returning to the drawing-room,
+he dropped into the easiest of the uneasy chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with Uncle Joe to-night, Millie?"
+he enquired, and for answer Millie threw herself upon
+him, wound her arms round his neck and sobbed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+<p>"Been a pleasant evenin', Lizzie," said Bindle
+conversationally, as they walked towards the nearest
+tram-stop.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle sniffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice young chap, Charley," he remarked a moment
+later. He was determined to redeem his promise to
+Millie.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the matter with you to-night?" she
+demanded aggressively.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Matter with me?" he enquired in surprise.
+"There ain't nothink the matter with me, Lizzie, I
+enjoyed myself fine."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sitting all the evening as if butter wouldn't
+melt in your mouth."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" began Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know you," she interrupted. "You wanted
+Millie and Charley to think it's all my fault and that
+you're a saint. They should see you in your own
+home," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"But I ain't said nothink," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't like that at home," she continued.
+"There you do nothing but blaspheme and talk lewd
+talk and sneer at Mr. Hearty. Oh! I can see through
+you," she added, "and you needn't think you deceived
+Millie, or Charley. They're not the fools you think
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle groaned in spirit. He had suffered acutely
+that evening, mentally having had to censor every
+sentence before uttering it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then look at the way you behaved. Eating like
+a gormand. You made me thoroughly ashamed of
+you. I could see Millie watching&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But she was watchin' to see I 'ad enough to eat,"
+he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me. Any decently refined girl would
+be disgusted at the way you behave. Eating jam
+tarts with your fingers."</p>
+
+<p>"But wot should I eat 'em with?"</p>
+
+<p>Before she had time to reply, the tram drew up and,
+following her usual custom, Mrs. Bindle made a dart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+for it, elbowing people right and left. She could always
+be trusted to make sufficient enemies in entering a
+vehicle to last most people for a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>"But wot should I eat 'em with?" enquired Bindle
+again when they were seated.</p>
+
+<p>"Sssh!" she hissed, conscious that a number of
+people were looking at her, including several who had
+made acquaintance with the sharpness of her elbows.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you ain't to eat jam tarts with yer fingers,
+'ow are you goin' to get 'em into yer mouth?" he
+enquired in a hoarse whisper, which was easily heard
+by the greater part of the occupants of the tram.
+"They don't jump," he added.</p>
+
+<p>A ripple of smiles broke out on the faces of most
+of their fellow-passengers.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Will</i> you be quiet?" hissed Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind you don't grow up like that, kid," whispered
+an amorous youth to a full-busted young woman,
+whose hand he was grasping with interlaced fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle heard the remark and drew in her lips
+still further.</p>
+
+<p>"Been gettin' yer face sticky, mate?" enquired
+a little man sitting next to Bindle, in a voice of
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle turned and gave him a wink.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had they alighted from the tram at
+The King's Head, than Mrs. Bindle's restraint
+vanished. All the way to Fenton Street she reviled
+Bindle for humiliating her before other people. She
+gave full rein to the anger that had been simmering
+within her all the evening. Millie should be told of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+his conduct. Charley should learn to hate him, and
+Little Joey to execrate the very mention of his name.</p>
+
+<p>"But you shouldn't go a-jabbin' yer elbows in
+people's&mdash;&mdash;" Bindle paused for a word sufficiently
+delicate for Mrs. Bindle's ears and which, at the same
+time, would leave no doubt as to the actual portion
+of the anatomy to which he referred.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll jab my elbows into you, if you're not careful,"
+was the uncompromising response. "I'm referring to
+the tarts."</p>
+
+<p>And Bindle made a bolt for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now this all comes through tryin' to sit on a
+safety-valve," he muttered. "Mrs. B. 'as got to blow-orf
+some'ow, or she'd bust."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BINDLE'S DISCOVERY</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Bindle went to
+chapel to engage in the weekly temperance
+service. As temperance meetings always
+engendered in Mrs. Bindle the missionary spirit, Bindle
+selected Wednesday for what he called his "night
+out."</p>
+
+<p>If he got home early, it was to encounter Mrs.
+Bindle's prophetic views as to the hereafter of those
+who spent their leisure in gin-palaces.</p>
+
+<p>At first Mrs. Bindle had shown her resentment by
+waiting up until Bindle returned; but as he made
+that return later each Wednesday, she had at last
+capitulated, and it became no longer necessary for him
+to walk the streets until two o'clock in the morning,
+in order to slip upstairs unchallenged as to where he
+expected to go when he died.</p>
+
+<p>One Wednesday night, as he was on his way home,
+whistling "Bubbles" at the stretch of his powers, he
+observed the figure of a girl standing under a lamp-post,
+her head bent, her shoulders moving convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ullo&mdash;'ullo!" he cried. "Wot's the matter
+now?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At Bindle's words she gave him a fleeting glance,
+then, turning once more to the business on hand, sobbed
+the louder.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's wrong, my dear?" Bindle enquired, regarding
+her with a puzzled expression. "Oo's been
+'urting you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&mdash;I'm afraid," she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid! There ain't nothink to be afraid of when
+Joe Bindle's about. Wot you afraid of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&mdash;I'm afraid to go home," sobbed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid to go 'ome," repeated Bindle. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"M-m-m-m-mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's up with 'er? She ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;she'll kill me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ferocious ole bird," he muttered. Then to the
+girl, "'Ere, you didn't ought to be out at this time o'
+night, a young gal like you. Why, it's gettin' on for
+twelve. Wot's wrong with Ma?"</p>
+
+<p>"She'll kill me. I darsen't go home." She looked
+up at Bindle, a pathetic figure, with twitching mouth
+and frightened eyes. Then, controlling her sobs, she
+told her story.</p>
+
+<p>She had been to Richmond with a girl friend, and
+some boys had taken them for a run on their motorcycles.
+One of the cycles had developed engine-trouble
+and, instead of being home by ten, it was half-past
+eleven before she got to Putney Bridge Station.</p>
+
+<p>"I darsen't go home," she wailed, as she finished
+her story. "Mother'll kill me. She said she would
+last time. I know she will," and again she began to
+cry, this time without any effort to shield her tear-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>stained
+face. Fear had rendered her regardless of
+appearances.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, I'll take you 'ome," cried Bindle, with the
+air of a man who has arrived at a mighty decision. "If
+Mrs. B. gets to 'ear of it, there'll be an 'ell of a row
+though," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>The girl appeared undecided.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't let her hurt me?" she asked, with
+the appealing look of a frightened child.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't start scrappin' with your ma, my
+dear," he said uncertainly; "but I'll do my best. My
+missis is a bit of a scrapper, you see, an' I've learned
+'ow to 'andle 'em. Of course, if she liked 'ymns an'
+salmon, it'd be sort of easier," he mused, "not that
+there's much chance of gettin' a tin' o' salmon at this
+time o' night."</p>
+
+<p>The girl, unaware of his habit of trading on Mrs.
+Bindle's fondness for tinned salmon and hymn tunes,
+looked at him with widened eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he continued, "it's got to be tack this time.
+'Ere, come along, young un, we can't stay 'ere all night.
+Where jer live?"</p>
+
+<p>She indicated with a nod the end of the street in
+which they stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, 'ere goes," he cried, starting off, the girl
+following. As they proceeded, her steps became more
+and more reluctant, until at last she stopped dead.</p>
+
+<p>"'Wot's up now?" he enquired, looking over his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I darsen't go in," she said tremulously. "I
+d-d-darsen't."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, come along," cried Bindle persuasively.
+"Your ma can't eat you. Which 'ouse is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That one." She nodded in the direction of a
+gate opposite a lamp-post, fear and misery in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, my dear. I won't let 'er 'urt you,"
+and, taking her gently by the arm, he led her towards
+the gate. Here, however, the girl stopped once more
+and clung convulsively to the railings, half-dead with
+fright.</p>
+
+<p>Opening the gate, Bindle walked up the short tiled
+path and, reaching up, grasped the knocker. As he
+did so, the door opened with such suddenness that he
+lurched forward, almost into the arms of a stout woman
+with a fiery face and angry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>From Bindle her gaze travelled to the shrinking
+figure clinging to the railings.</p>
+
+<p>"You old villain!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with
+passion, making a dive at Bindle, who, dodging nimbly,
+took cover behind a moth-eaten evergreen in the centre
+of the diminutive front garden.</p>
+
+<p>"You just let me catch you, keeping my gal out
+like this, and you old enough to be her father, too.
+As for you, my lady, you just wait till I get you
+indoors. I'll show you, coming home at this time o'
+night."</p>
+
+<p>She made another dive at Bindle; but her bulk
+was against her, and he found no difficulty in evading
+the attack.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'you mean by it?" she demanded, as she
+glared at him across the top of the evergreen, "and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+'er not seventeen yet. For two pins I'd have you
+taken up."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, old 'ard, missis," cried Bindle, keeping a wary
+eye upon his antagonist. "I ain't wot you think.
+I'm a dove, that's wot I am, an' 'ere are you a-playin'
+chase-me-Charlie round this 'ere&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till I get you," she shouted, drowning Bindle's
+protest. "I'll give you dove, keeping my gal out all
+hours. You just wait. I'll show you, or my name
+ain't Annie Brunger."</p>
+
+<p>She made another dive at him; but, by a swift
+movement, he once more placed the diminutive evergreen
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!&mdash;mother!" The girl rushed forward
+and clung convulsively to her mother's arm. "Mother,
+don't!"</p>
+
+<p>"You wait, my lady," cried Mrs. Brunger, shaking
+off her daughter's hand. "I'll settle with you when
+I've finished with him, the beauty. I'll show
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>The front door of the house on the right slowly
+opened, and a curl-papered head peeped out. Two
+doors away on the other side a window was raised,
+and a man's bald head appeared. The hounds of
+scandal scented blood.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" The girl shook her mother's arm
+desperately. "Mother, don't! This gentleman came
+home with me because I was afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" Mrs. Brunger turned to her
+daughter, who stood with pleading eyes clutching her
+arm, her own fears momentarily forgotten.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He saw me crying and said he'd come home with
+me because&mdash;&mdash;Oh, mother, don't!&mdash;don't!"</p>
+
+<p>Two windows on the opposite side of the way were
+noisily pushed up, and heads appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, look 'ere, missis," cried Bindle, seizing his
+opportunity. "It's no use a-chasin' me round this
+'ere gooseberry bush. I told you I ain't no lion. I
+come to smooth things over. A sort o' dove, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!&mdash;mother!" Again the girl clutched her
+mother's arm, shaking it in her excitement. "I was
+afraid to come home, honestly I was, and&mdash;and he saw
+me crying and&mdash;and said&mdash;&mdash;" Sobs choked her
+further utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"Come inside, the pair of you." Mrs. Brunger had
+at length become conscious of the interest of her
+neighbours. "Some folks never can mind their own
+business," she added, as a thrust at the inquisitive.
+Turning her back on the delinquent pair, she marched
+in at the door, along the short passage to the kitchen
+at the farther end, where the gas was burning.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle followed her confidently, and stood, cap in
+hand, by the kitchen-table, looking about him with
+interest. The girl, however, remained flattened against
+the side of the passage, as if anxious to efface herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie, if you don't come in, I'll fetch you," announced
+the mother threateningly.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie slid along the wall and round the door-post,
+making for the corner of the room farthest from her
+mother. There she stood with terrified eyes fixed upon
+her parent.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, what have you two got to say for
+yourselves?" Mrs. Brunger looked from Bindle to
+her daughter, with the air of one who is quite prepared
+to assume the responsibilities of Providence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was like this 'ere," said Bindle easily. "I
+see 'er," he jerked his thumb in the direction of the
+girl, "cryin' under a lamp-post down the street, so I
+asks 'er wot's up."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle paused, and Mrs. Brunger turned to her
+daughter with a look of interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;" began the girl, then she, too, stopped
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been with that hussy Mabel Warnes again."
+There was accusation and conviction in Mrs. Brunger's
+tone. "Don't you deny it," she continued, although
+the girl made no sign of doing so. "I warned you
+what I'd do to you if you went out with that fast little
+baggage again, and I'll do it, so help me God, I will."
+Her voice was rising angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere, look 'ere, missis&mdash;&mdash;" began Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"My name's Brunger&mdash;Mrs. Brunger," she added,
+to prevent any possibility of misconception. "I
+thought I told you once."</p>
+
+<p>"You did," said Bindle cheerfully. "Now, look
+'ere," he continued persuasively, "we're only young
+once."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger snorted disdainfully; and the look she
+gave her daughter caused the girl to shrink closer to
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Rare cove I was for gettin' 'ome late," remarked
+Bindle reminiscently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"More shame you," was the uncompromising
+retort.</p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't wonder if you was a bit late now an'
+again when you was a gal," he continued, looking up at
+Mrs. Brunger with critical appreciation&mdash;"or else the
+chaps didn't know wot was wot," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Two blacks don't make a white," was Mrs. Brunger's
+obscure comment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but a gal can't 'elp bein' pretty," continued
+Bindle, following the line of his reasoning. "Now, if
+you'd been like some ma's, no one wouldn't 'ave wanted
+to keep 'er out."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you getting at?" demanded Mrs. Brunger;
+but there was no displeasure in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only the pretty ones wot gets kept out late,"
+continued Bindle imperturbably, his confidence rising
+at the signs of a weakening defence. "Now, with a
+ma like you," he paused eloquently, "it was bound to
+'appen. You didn't ought to be too 'ard on the gal,
+although, mind you," he said, turning to the culprit,
+"she didn't ought to go out with gals against her ma's
+wishes, an' she's goin' to be a good gal in future&mdash;ain't
+that so, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl nodded her head vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"There, you see," continued Bindle, turning once
+more to Mrs. Brunger, whose face was showing marked
+signs of relaxation. "Now, if I was a young chap
+again," he continued, looking from mother to daughter,
+"well, anythink might 'appen."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on with you, do." Mrs. Brunger's good humour
+was returning.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose I must," said Bindle, with a grin.
+"It's about time I was 'opping it."</p>
+
+<p>His announcement seemed to arouse the girl. Hitherto
+she had stood a silent witness, puzzled at the strange
+turn events were taking; but now she realised that
+her protector was about to leave her to the enemy.
+She started forward, and clutched Bindle by the
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go!&mdash;oh, don't go! I&mdash;&mdash;" She stopped
+suddenly, and looked across at her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't a-goin' to be too 'ard on 'er?" said
+Bindle, interpreting the look.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger looked irresolute. Her anger found
+its source in the mother-instinct of protection rather
+than in bad temper. Bindle was quick to take advantage
+of her indecision. With inspiration he turned to
+the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you mustn't worry yer ma, my dear. She's
+got quite enough to see to without bein' bothered by a
+pretty little 'ead like yours. Now, if she forgives you,
+will you promise 'er not to be late again, an' not to go
+with that gal wot she don't like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, yes! I won't, mums, honestly." She
+looked appealingly at her mother, and saw something
+in her face that was reassuring, for a moment later she
+was clinging almost fiercely to her mother's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come in one Saturday evening and see
+my husband," said Mrs. Brunger a few minutes later,
+as Bindle fumbled with the latch of the hall door.
+"He's on <i>The Daily Age</i>, and is only home a-Saturday
+nights."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do, <i>please</i>!" cried the girl, smiles having
+chased all but the marks of tears from her face, and
+Bindle promised that he would.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if Mrs. B. was to 'ear of these little goin's
+on," he muttered, as he walked towards Fenton Street,
+"there'd be an 'ell of a row. Mrs. B.'s a good woman
+an', bein' a good woman, she's bound to think the
+worst," and he swung open the gate that led to his
+"Little Bit of 'Eaven."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Mrs. Stitchley."</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Mrs. Bindle. I 'ope I 'aven't
+come at a inconvenient time."</p>
+
+<p>"No, please come in," said Mrs. Bindle, with almost
+geniality, as she stood aside to admit her caller, then,
+closing the front-door behind her, she opened that
+leading to the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you just wait here a minute, Mrs. Stitchley,
+and I'll pull up the blind?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley smirked and smiled, whilst Mrs. Bindle
+made her way, with amazing dexterity, through the
+maze of things with which the room was crammed,
+in the direction of the window.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later, she pulled up the dark-green blind,
+which was always kept drawn so that the carpet might
+not fade, and the sunlight shuddered into the room.
+It revealed a grievous medley of antimacassared chairs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+stools, photograph-frames, pictures and ornaments,
+all of which were very dear to Mrs. Bindle's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Stitchley?" enquired
+Mrs. Bindle primly. Mrs. Stitchley was inveterate in
+her attendance at the Alton Road Chapel; Bindle
+had once referred to her as "a chapel 'og."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, my dear, thank you," said Mrs. Stitchley,
+whose manner exuded friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about her dubiously, and it was Mrs.
+Bindle who settled matters by indicating a chair of
+stamped-plush, the seat of which rose hard and high
+in the centre. Over the back was an ecru antimacassar,
+tied with a pale-blue ribbon. After a moment's hesitation,
+Mrs. Stitchley entrusted it with her person.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a long time since I see you, Mrs. Bindle."
+They had met three evenings previously at chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle smiled feebly. She always suspected
+Mrs. Stitchley of surreptitious drinking, in spite of the
+fact that she belonged to the chapel Temperance
+Society. Mrs. Stitchley's red nose, coupled with the
+passion she possessed for chewing cloves, had made
+her fellow-worshipper suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot a nice room," Mrs. Stitchley looked about
+her appreciatively, "so genteel, and 'ow refined."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle smirked.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sayin' to Stitchley only yesterday mornin'
+at breakfast&mdash;he was 'avin' sausages, 'e bein' so fond
+of 'em&mdash;'Mrs. Bindle 'as taste,' I says, '<i>and</i> refinement.'"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle, who had seated herself opposite her
+visitor, drew in her chin and folded her hands before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+her, with the air of one who is receiving only what she
+knows to be her due.</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Stitchley, with a sigh, "I was
+always one for refinement <i>and</i> respectability."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle said nothing. She was wondering why
+Mrs. Stitchley had called. Although she would not
+have put it into words, or even allow it to find form in
+her thoughts, she knew Mrs. Stitchley to be a woman
+to whom gossip was the breath of life.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you're wonderin' why I've come, my dear,"
+continued Mrs. Stitchley, who always grew more
+friendly as her calls lengthened, "but it's a dooty. I
+says to Stitchley this mornin', 'There's that poor, dear
+Mrs. Bindle a-livin' in innocence of the way in which
+she's bein' vilated.'" Mrs. Stitchley was sometimes a
+little loose in the way she constructed her sentences
+and the words she selected.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's lips began to assume a hard line.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, Mrs. Stitchley," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Jest wot I says to Stitchley, 'She don't know, the
+poor lamb,' I says, ''ow she's bein' deceived, 'ow she's&mdash;&mdash;'"
+Mrs. Stitchley paused, not from any sense of
+the dramatic; but because of a violent hiccough that
+had assailed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, mum&mdash;Mrs. Bindle," she corrected
+herself; "but I always was a one for 'iccups, an' when it
+ain't 'iccups it's spasms. Stitchley was sayin' to me
+only yesterday, no it wasn't, it was the day before,
+that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you tell me what you were going to?" said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+Mrs. Bindle. She knew of old how rambling were
+Mrs. Stitchley's methods of narration.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, to be sure," and she nodded until the
+jet ornament in her black bonnet seemed to have
+become palsied. "Well, my dear, it's like this. As
+I was sayin' to Stitchley this mornin', 'I can't see poor
+Mrs. Bindle deceived by that monster.' I see through
+'im that evenin', a-turnin' your 'appy party into&mdash;&mdash;"
+she paused for a simile&mdash;"into wot 'e turned it
+into," she added with inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! the wickedness of this world, Mrs. Bindle.
+Oh! the sin and error." She cast up her bleary,
+watery blue eyes, and gazed at the yellow paper flycatcher,
+and once more the jet ornament began to
+shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Please tell me what it is, Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs.
+Bindle, conscious of a sense of impending disaster.</p>
+
+<p>"The wicked man, the cruel, heartless creature;
+but they're all the same, as I tell Stitchley, and him
+with a wife like you, Mrs. Bindle, to carry on with a
+young Jezebel like that, to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Carry on with a young Jezebel!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle's whole manner had changed. Her
+uprightness seemed to have become emphasised, and
+the grim look about her mouth had hardened into one
+of menace. Her eyes, hard as two pieces of steel,
+seemed to pierce through her visitor's brain. "What
+do you mean?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Mrs. Stitchley recoiled.</p>
+
+<p>"As I says to Stitchley&mdash;&mdash;" she began, when Mrs.
+Bindle broke in.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never mind Mr. Stitchley," she snapped. "Tell
+me what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley looked hurt. Things were not going
+exactly as she had planned. In the retailing of
+scandal, she was an artist, and she constructed her
+periods with a view to their dramatic effect upon her
+listener.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she continued reminiscently, "'e's been a
+good 'usbindt 'as Stitchley. Never no gallivanting
+with other females. 'E's always said: 'Matilda, my
+dear, there won't never be another woman for me.'
+His very words, Mrs. Bindle, I assure <i>you</i>," and Mrs.
+Stitchley preened herself like a moth-eaten peacock.</p>
+
+<p>"You were saying&mdash;&mdash;" began Mrs. Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, to be sure," said Mrs. Stitchley; "but
+we all 'ave our crosses to bear. The Lord will give
+you strength, Mrs. Bindle, just as He gave me strength
+when Stitchley lorst 'is leg. 'The Lord giveth and
+the Lord taketh away,'" she added enigmatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs. Bindle, rising with an
+air of decision, "I insist on your telling me what you
+mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! my dear," said Mrs. Stitchley, with an emotion
+in her voice that she usually kept for funerals, "I
+knew 'ow it would be. I says to Stitchley, 'Stitchley,'
+I says, 'that poor, dear woman will suffer. She was
+made for sufferin'. She's one of them gentle, tender
+lambs, that's trodden underfoot by the serpent's tooth
+of man's lust; but she will bear 'er cross.' Them was
+my very words, Mrs. Bindle," she added, indifferent
+to the mixture of metaphor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle looked at her visitor helplessly. Her
+face was very white; but she realised Mrs. Stitchley's
+loquacity was undammable.</p>
+
+<p>"A-takin' 'ome a young gal at two o'clock in the
+mornin', and then bein' asked in by 'er mother&mdash;and
+'er father away at 'is work every night&mdash;and 'er not
+mor'n seventeen, and all the neighbours with their
+'eads out of the windows, and 'er a-screechin' and
+askin' of 'er mother not to 'it 'er, and 'er sayin' 'Wait
+'till I get you, my gal,' and callin' 'im an ole villain.
+'E ought to be took up. I says to Stitchley, 'Stitchley,'
+I says, 'that man ought to be took up, an' it's only
+because of Lord George that 'e ain't.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Mrs. Bindle made an effort
+to control herself. "Who was it that took some one
+home at two o'clock in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"You poor lamb," croaked Mrs. Stitchley, gazing
+up at Mrs. Bindle, whose unlamblike qualities were
+never more marked than at that moment. "You
+poor lamb. You're being deceived, Mrs. Bindle, cruelly
+and wickedly vilated. Your 'usbindt's carrying on
+with a young gal wot might 'ave been 'is daughter.
+Oh! the wickedness of this world, the&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley started back. The words seemed
+almost to hit her in the face. She blinked her eyes
+uncertainly, as she looked at Mrs. Bindle, the
+embodiment of an outraged wife and a vengeful
+fury.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I must be going, my dear," said Mrs.
+Stitchley; "but I felt I ought to tell you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not until you've told me everything," said Mrs.
+Bindle, with decision, as she moved towards the door,
+"and you don't leave this room until you've explained
+what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley turned round in her chair as Mrs.
+Bindle passed across the room, surprise and fear in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord a mercy me!" she cried. "Don't ee take
+on like that, Mrs. Bindle. 'E ain't worth it."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Bindle proceeded to make it abundantly
+clear to Mrs. Stitchley that she required the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without
+unnecessary circumlocution, verbiage, or obscuring
+metaphor.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of five minutes she had reduced her visitor
+to a state of tearful compliance.</p>
+
+<p>At first her periods halted; but she soon got into
+her stride and swung along with obvious enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>"My sister-in-law, not as she is my sister-in-law
+regler, Stitchley's father 'avin' married twice, 'is second
+bein' a widow with five of 'er own, an' 'er not twenty-nine
+at the time, reckless, I calls it. As I was sayin',
+Mrs. Coggles, 'er name's enough to give you a pain,
+an' the state of 'er 'ome, my dear&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Stitchley
+raised her eyes to the ceiling as if words failed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she continued after a momentary pause,
+during which Mrs. Bindle looked at her without moving
+a muscle, "as I was sayin', Mrs. Coggles"&mdash;she shuddered
+slightly as she pronounced the name&mdash;"she lives
+in Arloes Road, No. 9, pink tie-ups to 'er curtains
+she 'as, an' that flashy in 'er dress. Well, well!" she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+concluded, as if Christian charity had come to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>"She told me all about it. She was jest a-goin' to
+bed, bein' late on account of 'Ector, that's 'er seventh,
+ten months old an' still at the breast, disgustin' I calls
+it, 'avin' wot she thought was convulsions, an' 'earin'
+the row an' 'ubbub, she goes to the door an' sees everythink,
+an' that's the gospel truth, Mrs. Bindle, if I was
+to be struck down like Sulphira."</p>
+
+<p>She then proceeded to give a highly elaborated and
+ornate account of Bindle's adventure of some six weeks
+previously. She accompanied her story with a wealth
+of detail, most of which was inaccurate, coupled with
+the assurance that the Lord and Mrs. Stitchley would
+undoubtedly do all in their power to help Mrs. Bindle
+in her hour of trial.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Mrs. Stitchley found herself walking down
+the little tiled path that led to the Bindles' outer gate,
+in her heart a sense of great injustice.</p>
+
+<p>"Never so much as bite or sup," she mumbled, as
+she turned out of the gate, taking care to leave it open,
+"and me a-tellin' 'er all wot I told 'er. I've come across
+meanness in my time; but I never been refused a
+cup-o'-tea, an' me fatiguing myself something cruel
+to go an' tell 'er. I don't wonder he took up with
+that bit of a gal."</p>
+
+<p>That night she confided in her husband. "Stitchley,"
+she said, "there ain't never smoke without fire,
+you mark my words," and Stitchley, glancing up from
+his newspaper, enquired what the 'ell she was gassing
+about; but she made no comment beyond emphasising,
+once more, that he was to mark her words.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, Mrs. Bindle worked with a vigour
+unusual even in her. She attacked the kitchen fire,
+hurled into the sink a flat-iron that had the temerity
+to get too hot, scrubbed boards that required no
+scrubbing, washed linoleum that was spotless, blackleaded
+where to blacklead was like painting the lily.
+In short, she seemed determined to exhaust her energies
+and her anger upon the helpless and inanimate things
+about her.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time there burst from her closed lips a
+sound as of one who has difficulty in holding back her
+pent-up feelings.</p>
+
+<p>At length, having cleaned everything that was cleanable,
+she prepared a cup-of-tea, which she drank standing.
+Then, removing her apron and taking her bonnet
+from the dresser-drawer, she placed it upon her head
+and adjusted the strings beneath her chin.</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for any other garment, she left the
+house and made direct for Arloes Road.</p>
+
+<p>Twice she walked its length, subjecting to a careful
+scrutiny the house occupied by the Brungers,
+noting the windows with great care, and finding in
+them little to criticise. Then she returned to Fenton
+Street.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of having viewed the actual scene of Bindle's
+perfidy seemed to corroborate Mrs. Stitchley's story.
+Before the storm was to be permitted to burst, however,
+Mrs. Bindle intended to make assurance doubly
+sure by, as she regarded it in her own mind, "catching
+him at it."</p>
+
+<p>That night, she selected for her evening reading the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+chapter in the Bible which tells of the plagues of Egypt.
+Temporarily she saw herself in the roll of an outraged
+Providence, whilst for the part of Pharaoh she had
+cast Bindle, who, unaware of his impending doom, was
+explaining to Ginger at The Yellow Ostrich that a
+bigamist ought to be let off because "'e must be mad
+to 'ave done it."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">III</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle awaited the coming of Saturday evening
+with a grimness that caused Bindle more than once to
+regard her curiously. "There's somethink on the
+'andle," he muttered prophetically; but as Mrs.
+Bindle made no sign and, furthermore, as she set before
+him his favourite dishes, he allowed speculation to
+become absorbed in appetite and enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of Mrs. Bindle that, Bindle
+being more than usually under a cloud, she should take
+extra care in the preparation of his meals. It was
+her way of emphasising the difference between them;
+he the erring husband, she the perfect wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't be in to supper to-night, Lizzie," Bindle
+announced casually on the evening of what Mrs. Bindle
+had already decided was to be her day of wrath. He
+picked up his bowler-hat preparatory to making one
+of his lightning exits.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" she demanded, hoping to
+trap him in a lie.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When you gets yerself up dossy an' says you're
+goin' to chapel," he remarked, edging towards the door,
+"I says nothink at all, bein' a trustin' 'usband; so
+when I gets myself up ditto an' says I ain't goin' to
+chapel, you didn't ought to say nothink either, Mrs. B.
+Wot's sauce for the goose is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a bad, black-hearted man, Bindle, and you
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>The intensity of feeling with which the words were
+uttered surprised him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think you can throw dust&mdash;&mdash;" She
+stopped suddenly, then concluded, "You'd better be
+careful."</p>
+
+<p>"I am, Mrs. B.," he replied cheerily, "careful <i>as</i>
+careful."</p>
+
+<p>Bindle had fallen into a habit of "dropping in"
+upon the Brungers on Saturday evenings, and for this
+purpose he had what he described as "a wash an'
+brush-up." This resolved itself into an entire change
+of raiment, as well as the customary "rinse" at the
+kitchen sink. This in itself confirmed Mrs. Stitchley's
+story.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, s'long," said Bindle, as he opened the kitchen
+door. "Keep the 'ome fires burnin'," and with that
+he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle had learned from past experience that the
+more dramatic his exit the less likelihood there was of
+Mrs. Bindle scoring the final dialectical point.</p>
+
+<p>This evening, however, she had other and weightier
+matters for thought&mdash;and action. No sooner had the
+kitchen door closed than, moving swiftly across to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+dresser, she pulled open a drawer, and drew out her
+dark brown mackintosh and bonnet. With swift, deft
+movements she drew on the one, and tied the strings
+of the other beneath her chin. Then, without waiting
+to look in the mirror over the mantelpiece, she passed
+into the passage and out of the hall door.</p>
+
+<p>She was just in time to see Bindle disappear round
+the corner. Without a moment's hesitation she
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious that Mrs. Bindle, like Nemesis, was
+dogging his steps, Bindle continued his way until
+finally he turned into Arloes Road. On reaching
+the second lamp-post he gave vent to a peculiarly
+shrill whistle. As he opened the gate that led to a
+neat little house, the front door opened, and a young
+girl ran down the path and clasped his arm. It was
+obvious that she had been listening for the signal. A
+moment later they entered the house together.</p>
+
+<p>For a few seconds Mrs. Bindle stood at the end of
+the road, staring at the door that had closed behind
+them. Her face was white and set, and a grey line of
+grimness marked the spot where her lips had disappeared.
+She had noted that the girl was pretty,
+with fair hair that clung about her head in wanton
+little tendrils and, furthermore, that it was bound with
+a broad band of light green ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>"The villain!" she muttered between set teeth, as
+she turned and proceeded to retrace her steps. "I'll
+show him."</p>
+
+<p>Arrived back at Fenton Street, she went straight
+upstairs and proceeded to make an elaborate toilet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+A little more than an hour later the front door once
+more closed behind her, and Mrs. Bindle proceeded
+upon her way, buttoning her painfully tight gloves,
+conscious that sartorially she was a triumph of completeness.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">IV</p>
+
+<p>"An' 'as 'er Nibs been a good gal all the week?"
+Bindle paused in the act of raising a glass of ale to his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I have, mums, haven't I?" Elsie Brunger
+broke in, without giving her mother a chance to
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger nodded. The question had caught
+her at a moment when her mouth was overfull of
+fried plaice and potatoes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the ticket," said Bindle approvingly.
+"No bein' out late an' gettin' 'ome with the milk,
+or"&mdash;he paused impressively&mdash;"I gets another gal,
+see?"</p>
+
+<p>By this time Mrs. Brunger had reduced the plaice
+and potatoes to conversational proportions.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been helping me a lot in the house, too,"
+she said from above a white silk blouse that seemed
+determined to show how much there really was of Mrs.
+Brunger.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie looked triumphantly across the supper-table
+at Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good gal," said Bindle approvingly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've done her a lot of good, Mr. Bindle," said
+Mrs. Brunger, "and me and George are grateful,
+ain't we, George?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brunger, a heavy-faced man with sad, lustreless
+eyes and a sallow skin, nodded. He was a man to
+whom speech came with difficulty, but on this occasion
+his utterance was constricted by a fish-bone lodged
+somewhere in the neighbourhood of the root of his
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful 'ow all the gals take to me," remarked
+Bindle. "Chase me round gooseberry bushes, they
+do; anythink to get me."</p>
+
+<p>"You go on with you, do," laughed Mrs. Brunger.
+"How was I to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said I was a dove. You 'eard me, didn't you,
+Fluffy?" he demanded, turning to Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't be called Fluffy," she cried, in mock
+indignation. "You know I don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"The man who goes about doin' wot a woman says
+she likes ain't goin' to get much jam," remarked Bindle
+oracularly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, let's get cleared away, mother," remarked
+Mr. Brunger, speaking for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dad! don't you love your dominoes?"
+cried Elsie, jumping up and giving him a hug. "All
+right, mums and I will soon sound the 'All
+clear.' Come along, uncle, you butle." This to
+Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst much chatter and laughter the table was
+cleared, the red cloth spread in place of the white,
+and the domino-box reached down from the kitchen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+mantelpiece. The serious business of the evening had
+begun.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brunger had only one evening a week at home,
+and this he liked to divide between his family and his
+favourite game, giving the major part of his attention
+to the game.</p>
+
+<p>At one time he had been in the habit of asking in
+some friend or acquaintance to join him; but, since
+the arrival of Bindle, it had become an understood
+thing that the same quartette should meet each Saturday
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger would make a pretence of crocheting.
+The product possessed one thing in common with the
+weaving of Penelope, in that it never seemed to make
+any appreciable progress towards completion.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brunger devoted himself to the rigours of the
+game, and Elsie would flutter between the two players,
+bursting, but never daring, to give the advice that her
+superior knowledge made valuable.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle kept the party amused, that is, except Mr.
+Brunger, who was too wrapped up in the bone parallelograms
+before him to be conscious of anything
+else.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie would as soon have thought of missing her
+Sunday dinner as those Saturday evenings, and Mrs.
+Brunger soon found that a new and powerful weapon
+had been thrust into her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, you go to bed at seven on Saturday,"
+she would say, which was inevitably followed by an
+"Oh, mums!" of contrition and docility.</p>
+
+<p>"Out! You're beaten, uncle," cried Elsie, clapping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+her hands, and enjoying the look of mock mortification
+with which Bindle regarded the dominoes before him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brunger leaned back in his chair, an expression
+of mild triumph modifying his heavily-jowled countenance.
+It was remarkable how consistently Mr. Brunger
+was victor.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a loud and peremptory rat-tat-tat
+sounded down the passage.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I wonder who that is." Mrs. Brunger put
+down her crochet upon the table and rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you bring anyone in here, mother," ordered
+Mr. Brunger, fearful that his evening was to be spoiled,
+as he began to mix the dominoes. There was no music
+so dear to his soul as their click-clack, as they brushed
+shoulders with one another.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger left the room and, carefully closing the
+door behind her, passed along the short passage and
+opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come for my husband!"</p>
+
+<p>On the doorstep stood Mrs. Bindle, grim as Fate.
+Her face was white, her eyes hard, and her mouth
+little more than indicated by a line of shadow between
+her closely pressed lips. The words seemed to strike
+Mrs. Brunger dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Your&mdash;your husband?" she repeated at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my 'usband." Mrs. Bindle's diction was
+losing its purity and precision under the stress of great
+emotion. "I know 'e's here. Don't you deny it.
+I saw 'im come. Oh, you wicked woman!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger blinked in her bewilderment. She was
+taken by surprise at the suddenness of the assault;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+but her temper was rising under this insulting and
+unprovoked attack.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that you call me?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Taking a woman's lawful wedded 'usband&mdash;&mdash;"
+began Mrs. Bindle, when she was interrupted by Mrs.
+Brunger.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, come in," she cried, mindful that inside the
+house only those on either side could hear, whereas
+on the doorstep their conversation would be the
+property of the whole street.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle followed Mrs. Brunger into the parlour.
+For a moment the two women were silent, whilst Mrs.
+Brunger found the matches, lighted the gas, and
+lowered the blind.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what's the matter with you? What's
+your trouble?" demanded Mrs. Brunger, with suppressed
+passion. "Out with it."</p>
+
+<p>"I want my 'usband," repeated Mrs. Bindle, a
+little taken aback by the fierceness of the onslaught.</p>
+
+<p>"An' what have I got to do with your husband, I
+should like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's here. You're encouraging him, leading him
+away from&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Bindle paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Leadin' him away from what?" demanded Mrs.
+Brunger.</p>
+
+<p>"From me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leadin' him away, am I?&mdash;leadin' him away, I
+think you said?" Mrs. Brunger placed a hand on
+either hip and thrust her face forward, causing Mrs.
+Bindle involuntarily to start back.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you needn't be afraid. I'm not goin' to hit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+you. Leadin' him away was what you said." Mrs.
+Brunger paused dramatically, and leaned back slightly,
+as if to get a more comprehensive view of her antagonist.
+"Well, he must be a pretty damn short-sighted
+fool to want leadin' away from a thing like you. I'd
+run hell-hard if I was him."</p>
+
+<p>The biting scorn of the words, the insultingly contemptuous
+tone in which they were uttered, for a
+moment seemed to daze Mrs. Bindle; but only for a
+breathing space.</p>
+
+<p>Making a swift recovery, she turned upon her
+antagonist a stream of accusation and reproach.</p>
+
+<p>She told how a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road
+Chapel had witnessed the return of Bindle the night
+of the altercation in the front garden. She accused
+mother and daughter of unthinkable crimes, bringing
+Scriptural quotation to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>She confused Fulham and Hammersmith with Sodom
+and Gomorrah. She called upon an all-seeing Providence
+to purge the district in general, and Arloes
+Road in particular, of its pestilential populace.</p>
+
+<p>She traced the descent of Mrs. Brunger down
+generations of infamy and sin. She threatened her
+with punishment in this world and the next. She told
+of Bindle's neglect and wickedness, and cast him out
+into the tooth-gnashing darkness. She trampled him
+under foot, arranged that Providence should spurn
+him and his associates, and consign them all to eternal
+and fiery damnation.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually she worked herself up into a frenzy of
+hysterical invective. Little points of foam formed at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+the corners of her mouth. Her bonnet had slipped off
+backwards, and hung by its strings round her neck.
+Her right-hand glove of biscuit brown had split across
+the palm.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bindle had lost all control of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"He's here! He's here! I saw him come! You
+Jezebel! You're hiding him; but I'll find him. I'll
+find him. You&mdash;you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a wild, hysterical scream, she darted to the
+door, tore it open, dashed along the passage, and
+burst into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"So I've caught you with the Jez&mdash;&mdash;" She
+stopped as if petrified.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brunger had just played his last domino, and
+was sitting back in his chair in triumph. Elsie, one
+arm round her father's neck, was laughing derisively
+at Bindle, who sat gazing with comical concern
+at five dominoes standing on their sides facing
+him.</p>
+
+<p>All three heads jerked round, and three pairs of
+widened eyes gazed at the dishevelled, white-faced
+figure, standing looking down at them with the light
+of madness in its eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo-er!" gasped Elsie, as her arms tightened round
+her father's neck, almost strangling him.</p>
+
+<p>"Grrrrmp," choked Mr. Brunger, dropping his pipe
+on to his knees.</p>
+
+<p>Bindle started up, overturning his chair in the movement.
+His eyes were blazing, his lips were set in a firm
+line, and his hands were clenched convulsively at his
+sides.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you get out of 'ere!" the words seemed to
+burst from him involuntarily, "or&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>For one bewildered moment, Mrs. Bindle stared at
+him, in her eyes a look in which surprise and fear seemed
+to strive for mastery. Her gaze wandered on to the
+frightened girl clutching her father round the neck,
+and then back to Bindle. She turned as suddenly
+as she had entered, cannoned off Mrs. Brunger, who
+stood behind her, and stumbled blindly along the
+passage out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brunger followed, and closed the front-door
+behind her. When she returned to the kitchen, Bindle
+had picked up his chair and resumed his seat. His
+hands were trembling slightly, and he was very white.</p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;she ain't been well lately," he muttered
+huskily. "I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, mother, where's the beer? I'm feeling a
+bit thirsty;" and after this unusually lengthy speech,
+Mr. Brunger proceeded to shuffle the dominoes with
+an almost alarming vigour, whilst Elsie, wonder-eyed
+and a little pale, sat on the arm of her father's chair
+glancing covertly at Bindle.</p>
+
+<p>That night, when he returned home, Bindle found
+laid out on the kitchen table, a bottle of beer, a glass,
+two pieces of bread and butter, a piece of cheese and a
+small dish of pickled onions.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered, at the sight of
+this unusual attention. "Wonders'll never cease,"
+and he proceeded to unscrew the stopper of the beer-bottle.</p>
+
+<p>The incident of the Brungers was never subsequently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+referred to between them; but Mrs. Bindle gave
+herself no rest until she had unmasked the cause of all
+the trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stitchley was persuaded to see the reason why
+she should withdraw from the Alton Road Chapel
+Temperance Society, the reason being a half-quartern
+bottle of gin, from which she was caught imbibing at a
+magic-lantern entertainment,&mdash;and it was Mrs. Bindle
+who caught her.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="notebox">
+<p><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> Punctuation has been normalized. On page 245, the word "mumured" in the original text has been changed to "murmured".</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Hebert Jenkins
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+</pre>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Hebert Jenkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Bindle
+       Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles
+
+Author: Hebert Jenkins
+
+Release Date: September 6, 2011 [EBook #37324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. BINDLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Cathy Maxam and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  MRS BINDLE
+
+  SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE
+  DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BINDLES
+
+
+
+
+  WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT
+
+
+  Ever since the success achieved by _Bindle_, Herbert Jenkins has been
+  urged to write giving Mrs. Bindle's point of view. This book is the
+  result.
+
+  Among other things, it narrates how Mrs. Bindle caught a chill, how a
+  nephew was born to her and what effect it had upon her outlook.
+
+  It tells how she encountered a bull, and what happened to the man who
+  endeavoured to take forcible possession of her home.
+
+  She is shown as breaking a strike by precipitating a lock-out, burning
+  incense to her brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, and refusing the armistice
+  that was offered.
+
+  One chapter tells of her relations with her neighbours. Another deals
+  with a musical evening she planned, and yet a third of how she caught
+  a chill and was in great fear of heaven.
+
+
+  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+    BINDLE                               2s. 6d. net.
+    THE NIGHT CLUB                       2s. 6d. net.
+    ADVENTURES OF BINDLE                 2s. 6d. net.
+    JOHN DENE OF TORONTO                 2s. 6d. net.
+    MALCOLM SAGE, DETECTIVE              2s. 6d. net.
+    PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER             2s. 6d. net.
+    THE RAIN-GIRL                        2s. 6d. net.
+    THE RETURN OF ALFRED                 2s. 6d. net.
+    THE BINDLES ON THE ROCKS             2s. 6d. net.
+    THE STIFFSONS and other stories      2s. 6d. net.
+
+
+
+
+  MRS
+  BINDLE
+
+  SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE
+  DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BINDLES
+
+  BY
+  HERBERT
+  JENKINS
+
+  HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
+  YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S S.W.1.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  _Ninth printing, completing 104,643 copies_
+
+  MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+  PURNELL AND SONS, PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  ARTHUR
+  COMPTON
+  RICKETT
+  M.A., LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                     PAGE
+
+     I. MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT                   9
+
+    II. MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY               38
+
+   III. MRS. BINDLE ENTERTAINS                  60
+
+    IV. THE COMING OF JOSEPH THE SECOND         89
+
+     V. MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE              108
+
+    VI. MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME           125
+
+   VII. MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY          150
+
+  VIII. THE SUMMER-CAMP FOR TIRED WORKERS      168
+
+    IX. MR. HEARTY ENCOUNTERS A BULL           188
+
+     X. THE COMING OF THE WHIRLWIND            209
+
+    XI. MRS. BINDLE TAKES A CHILL              237
+
+   XII. MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE        263
+
+  XIII. MRS. BINDLE'S DISCOVERY                283
+
+
+
+
+MRS BINDLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT
+
+
+I
+
+"Well! What's the matter now? Lorst your job?"
+
+With one hand resting upon the edge of the pail beside which she was
+kneeling, Mrs. Bindle looked up, challenge in her eyes. Bindle's
+unexpected appearance while she was washing the kitchen oilcloth filled
+her with foreboding.
+
+"There's a strike on at the yard," he replied in a tone which, in spite
+of his endeavour to render it casual, sounded like a confession of
+guilt. He knew Mrs. Bindle; he knew also her views on strikes.
+
+"A what?" she cried, rising to her feet and wiping her hands upon the
+coarse canvas apron that covered the skirt carefully festooned about her
+hips. "A what?"
+
+"A strike," repeated Bindle. "They give Walter 'Odson the sack, so we
+all come out."
+
+"Oh! you have, have you?" she cried, her thin lips disappearing
+ominously. "And when are you going back, I'd like to know?" She regarded
+him with an eye that he knew meant war.
+
+"Can't say," he replied, as he proceeded to fill his pipe from a tin
+tobacco-box. "Depends on the Union," he added.
+
+"The Union!" she cried with rising wrath. "I wish I had them here. I'd
+give them Union, throwing men out of work, with food the price it is.
+What's going to 'appen to us? Can you tell me that?" she demanded, her
+diction becoming a little frayed at the edges, owing to the intensity of
+her feelings.
+
+Bindle remained silent. He realised that he was faced by a crisis.
+
+"Nice thing you coming 'ome at eleven o'clock in the morning calmly
+saying you've struck," she continued angrily. "You're a lazy,
+good-for-nothing set of loafers, the whole lot of you, that's what you
+are. When you're tired of work and want a 'oliday you strike, and spend
+your time in public-'ouses, betting and drinking and swearing, and us
+women slaving morning, noon and night to keep you. Suppose I was to
+strike, what then?"
+
+She undid her canvas apron, and with short, jerky movements proceeded to
+fold and place it in the dresser-drawer. She then let down the festoons
+into which her skirt had been gathered about her inconspicuous hips.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was a sharp, hatchet-faced woman, with eyes too closely set
+together to satisfy an artist.
+
+The narrowness of her head was emphasised by the way in which her thin,
+sandy hair was drawn behind each ear and screwed tightly into a knot at
+the back.
+
+Her lips were thin and slightly marked, and when she was annoyed they
+had a tendency to disappear altogether.
+
+"How are we going to live?" she demanded. "Answer me that! You and your
+strikes!"
+
+Bindle struck a match and became absorbed in lighting his pipe.
+
+"What are you going to do for food?" She was not to be denied.
+
+"We're a-goin' to get strike pay," he countered, seizing the opening.
+
+"Strike pay!" she cried scornfully. "A fat lot of good that'll do. A
+pound a week, I suppose, and you eating like a--like a----" she paused
+for a satisfactory simile. "Eating me out of 'ouse and 'ome," she
+amended. "'Strike pay!' I'd give 'em strike pay if I had my way."
+
+"It'll 'elp," suggested Bindle.
+
+"Help! Yes, it'll help you to find out how hungry you can get," she
+retorted grimly. "I'd like to have that man Smillie here, I'd give him a
+bit of my mind."
+
+"But 'e ain't done it," protested Bindle, a sense of fair play prompting
+him to defend the absent leader. "'E's a miner. We don't belong to 'is
+Union."
+
+"They're all tarred with the same brush," cried Mrs. Bindle, "a
+good-for-nothing, lazy lot. They turn you round their little fingers,
+and then laugh at you up their sleeves. I know them," she added darkly.
+
+Bindle edged towards the door. He had not been in favour of the strike;
+now it was even less popular with him.
+
+"I suppose you're going round to your low public-house, to drink and
+smoke and tell each other how clever you've been," she continued. "Then
+you'll come back expecting to find your dinner ready to put in your
+mouth."
+
+Mrs. Bindle's words were prophetic. Bindle _was_ going round to The
+Yellow Ostrich to meet his mates, and discuss the latest strike-news.
+
+"You wouldn't 'ave me a blackleg, Lizzie, would you?" he asked.
+
+"Don't talk to me about such things," she retorted. "I'm a hardworking
+woman, I am, inchin' and pinchin' to keep the home respectable, while
+you and your low companions refuse to work. I wish I had them all here,
+I'd give them strikes." Her voice shook with suppressed passion.
+
+Realising that the fates were against him, Bindle beat a gloomy retreat,
+and turned his steps in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich.
+
+At one o'clock he returned to Fenton Street, a little doubtful; but very
+hungry.
+
+He closed the gate quietly, Mrs. Bindle hated the banging of gates.
+Suddenly he caught sight of a piece of white paper pinned to the front
+door. A moment later he was reading the dumbfounding announcement:
+
+     "I have struck too.
+
+     "E. BINDLE."
+
+The words, which were written on the back of a coal-merchant's
+advertisement, seemed to dance before his eyes.
+
+He was conscious that at the front window on either side a face was
+watching him intently. In Fenton Street drama was the common property of
+all.
+
+With a puzzled expression in his eyes, Bindle stood staring at the piece
+of paper and its ominous message, his right hand scratching his head
+through the blue and white cricket cap he habitually wore.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," he muttered, as Mrs. Grimps, who lived at No. 5,
+came to her door and stood regarding him not unsympathetically.
+
+At the sight of her neighbour, Mrs. Sawney, who occupied No. 9, also
+appeared, her hands rolled up in her apron and her arms steaming. She
+had been engaged in the scullery when "'Arriet," who had been set to
+watch events, rushed in from the front room with the news that Mr.
+Bindle was coming.
+
+"Serves you right, it does," said Mrs. Sawney. "You men," she added, as
+if to remove from her words any suggestion that they were intended as
+personal. Bindle was very popular with his neighbours.
+
+"Strikes you does, when you ain't feeling like work," chorused Mrs.
+Grimps, "I know you."
+
+Bindle looked from one to the other. For once he felt there was nothing
+to say.
+
+"Then there's the kids," said a slatternly-looking woman with a hard
+mouth and dusty hair, who had just drifted up from two doors away. "A
+lot you cares. It's us wot 'as to suffer."
+
+There was a murmur from the other women, who had been reinforced by two
+neighbours from the opposite side of the street.
+
+"She 'as my sympathy," said Mrs. Sawney, "although I can't say I likes
+'er as a friend."
+
+During these remarks, Bindle had been searching for his latch-key, which
+he now drew forth and inserted in the lock; but, although the latch
+responded, the door did not give. It was bolted on the inside.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered again, too surprised at this new phase
+of the situation to be more than dimly conscious of the remarks of those
+about him.
+
+"My sister's man struck three months ago," said one of the new arrivals,
+"and 'er expectin' 'er fifth. Crool I calls it. They ought to 'ave 'em
+theirselves is wot I say. That'ud learn 'em to strike."
+
+A murmur of approval broke from the others at this enigmatical
+utterance.
+
+"It's all very well for them," cried Mrs. Sawney; "but it's us wot 'as
+to suffer, us and the pore kids, bless 'em. 'Arriet, you let me catch
+you swingin' on that gate again, my beauty, and I'll skin you."
+
+The last remark was directed at the little girl, who had seized the
+moment of her mother's pre-occupation to indulge herself in an illicit
+joy.
+
+Without a word, Bindle turned and walked down the flagged path to the
+gate, and along Fenton Street in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich,
+leaving behind him a group of interested women, who would find in his
+tragedy material for a week's gossip.
+
+His customary cheeriness had forsaken him. He realised that he was faced
+by a domestic crisis that frankly puzzled him--and he was hungry.
+
+As he pushed open the hospitable swing-door of The Yellow Ostrich, he
+was greeted by a new and even more bewildering phase of the situation.
+
+"'Ere, Bindle," cried an angry voice, "wot the blinkin' 'ell's your
+missis up to?"
+
+"You may search me," was Bindle's lugubrious reply, as he moved across
+to the bar and ordered a pint of beer, some bread, and "a bit o' the
+cheese wot works the lift."
+
+"You was agin us chaps striking," continued the speaker who had greeted
+Bindle on his entrance, a man with a criminal forehead, a loose mouth,
+and a dirty neck-cloth.
+
+"Wot's your complaint, mate?" enquired Bindle indifferently, as he
+lifted his pewter from the counter, and took a pull that half emptied it
+of its contents.
+
+"Wot's your ruddy missis been up to?" demanded the man aggressively.
+
+"Look 'ere, 'Enery, ole sport," said Bindle quietly, as he wiped his
+lips with the back of his hand, "you ain't pretty, an' you ain't good;
+but try an' keep yer mouth clean when you speaks of Mrs. B. See?"
+
+A murmur of approval rose from the other men, with whom Bindle was
+popular and Henry Gilkes was not.
+
+"Wot's she mean a-goin' round to my missis an' gettin' 'er to bolt me
+out?"
+
+"Bolt you out!" cried Bindle, with a puzzled expression. "Wotjer talkin'
+about?"
+
+"When I goes 'ome to dinner," was the angry retort, "there's a ticket on
+the blinkin' door sayin' my missis 'as struck. I'll strike 'er!" he
+added malevolently. "The lady next door tells me that it's your missis
+wot done it."
+
+For a moment Bindle gazed at his fellow-sufferer, then he smacked his
+thigh with the air of a man who has just seen a great joke, which for
+some time has evaded him.
+
+"'Enery," he grinned, "she's done it to me too."
+
+"Done wot?" enquired Henry, who, as a Father of the Chapel, felt he was
+a man of some importance.
+
+"Locked me out, back _and_ front," explained Bindle, enjoying his mate's
+bewilderment. "Wot about the solidarity of labour now, ole sport?" he
+enquired.
+
+Henry Gilkes had one topic of conversation--"the solidarity of labour."
+Those who worked with him found it wearisome listening to his views on
+the bloated capitalist, and how he was to be overcome. They preferred
+discussing their own betting ventures, and the prospects of the Chelsea
+and Fulham football teams.
+
+"Done it to you!" repeated Gilkes dully. "Wot she done?"
+
+"I jest nipped round to get a bit o' dinner," explained Bindle, "and
+there was both doors bolted, an' a note a-sayin' that Mrs. B. 'ad
+struck. Personally, myself, I calls it a lock-out," he added with a
+grin.
+
+Several of his hearers began to manifest signs of uneasiness. They had
+not been home since early morning.
+
+"I'll break 'er stutterin' jaw if my missis locks me out," growled a
+heavily-bearded man, known as "Ruddy Bill" on account of the intensity
+of his language.
+
+"Jest the sort o' thing you would do," said Bindle genially. "You got a
+sweet nature, Bill, in spite of them whiskers."
+
+Ruddy Bill growled something in his beard, while several of the other
+men drained their pewters and slipped out, intent on discovering whether
+or no their own domestic bliss were threatened by this new and
+unexpected danger.
+
+From then on, the public bar of The Yellow Ostrich hummed with angry
+talk and threats of what would happen if the lords, who there gloried
+and drank deep, should return to their hearths and find manifestations
+of rebellion.
+
+Two of the men, who had gone to investigate the state of their own
+domestic barometers, were back in half an hour with the news that they
+too had been locked out from home and beauty.
+
+About three o'clock, Ruddy Bill returned, streams of profanity flowing
+from his lips. Finding himself bolted out, he had broken open the door;
+but no one was there. Now he was faced with a threat of ejectment from
+the landlord, who had heard of the wilful damage to his property, plus
+the cost of a new door.
+
+Several times that afternoon the landlord of The Yellow Ostrich, himself
+regarded as an epicure in the matter of "language," found it necessary
+to utter the stereotyped phrase, "Now gents, if _you_ please," which,
+with him, meant that the talk was becoming unfit for the fo'c'sle of a
+tramp steamer.
+
+
+II
+
+Left to herself by the departure of Bindle for The Yellow Ostrich, Mrs.
+Bindle had, for some time, stood by the dresser deep in thought. She had
+then wrung-out the house-flannel, emptied the pail, placed them under
+the sink and once more returned to the dresser. Five minutes' meditation
+was followed by swift action.
+
+First she took her bonnet from the dresser-drawer, then unhooking a dark
+brown mackintosh from behind the door, she proceeded to make her outdoor
+toilet in front of the looking-glass on the mantelpiece.
+
+She then sought out ink-bottle and pen, and wrote her defiance with an
+ink-eaten nib. This accomplished, she bolted the front-door on the
+inside, first attaching her strike-notice. Leaving the house by the
+door giving access to the scullery, she locked it, taking the key with
+her.
+
+Her face was grim and her walk was determined, as she made her way to
+the yard at which Bindle was employed. There she demanded to see the
+manager and, after some difficulty, was admitted.
+
+She began by reproaching him and ordering him to stop the strike. When,
+however, he had explained that the strike was entirely due to the action
+of the men, she ended by telling him of her own drastic action, and her
+determination to continue her strike until the men went back.
+
+The manager surprised her by leaning back in his chair and laughing
+uproariously.
+
+"Mrs. Bindle," he cried at length, as he wiped the tears from his eyes,
+"you're a genius; but I'm sorry for Bindle. Now, do you want to end the
+strike in a few hours?"
+
+Mrs. Bindle looked at him suspiciously; but, conscious of the very
+obvious admiration with which he regarded her act, she relented
+sufficiently to listen to what he had to say.
+
+Ten minutes later she left the office with a list of the names and
+addresses of the strikers, including that of the branch organising
+secretary of the Union. She had decided upon a counter-offensive.
+
+Her first call was upon Mrs. Gilkes, a quiet little woman who had been
+subdued to meekness by the "solidarity of labour." Here she had to admit
+failure.
+
+"I know what you mean, my dear," said Mrs. Gilkes; "but you see, Mr.
+Gilkes wouldn't like it." There was a tremor of fear in her voice.
+
+"Wouldn't like it!" echoed Mrs. Bindle. "Of course he wouldn't like it.
+Bindle won't like it when he knows," her jaws met grimly and her lips
+disappeared. "You're afraid," she added accusingly.
+
+"That's it, my dear, I am," was the disconcerting reply. "I never 'ad no
+'eart for a fight, that's why Mr. Gilkes 'as come it over me like 'e
+'as. My sister, Mary, was sayin' only last Toosday--no it wasn't, it was
+We'n'sday, I remember because it was the day we 'ad sausages wot Mr.
+Gilkes said wasn't fresh. 'Amelia,' she says, 'you ain't got the 'eart
+of a rabbit, or else you wouldn't stand wot you do,'" and, looking up
+into Mrs. Bindle's face, she added, "It's true, Mrs. Gimble, although I
+didn't own it to Mary, 'er bein' my sister an' so uppish in 'er ways."
+
+"Well, you'll be sorry," was Mrs. Bindle's comment, as she turned
+towards the door. "I'll be no man's slave."
+
+"You see, I 'aven't the 'eart, Mrs. Gimber."
+
+"Bindle!" snapped Mrs. Bindle over her shoulder.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Spindle, my mistake."
+
+Mrs. Bindle stalked along the passage, through the front door and out of
+the gate, leaving Mrs. Gilkes murmuring deprecatingly that she "'adn't
+no 'eart for a fight."
+
+Although she would not own it, Mrs. Bindle was discouraged by the
+failure of her first attempt at strike-breaking. But for her
+good-fortune in encountering Mrs. Hopton at her second venture, she
+might even have relinquished the part of Lysistrata and have returned
+home to prepare Bindle's dinner.
+
+It was with something like misgiving that she knocked at No. 32 Wessels
+Street. This feeling was accentuated when the door was opened with great
+suddenness by an enormously big woman with a square chin, fighting eyes,
+and very little hair.
+
+With arms akimbo, one elbow touching either side of the passage, as if
+imbued with the sentiments of Horatius Cocles, Mrs. Hopton stood with
+tightly-shut mouth regarding her caller. As soon as Mrs. Bindle had made
+her mission known, however, Mrs. Hopton's manner underwent an entire
+change. Her hands dropped from her hips, her fixed expression relaxed,
+and she stood invitingly aside.
+
+"I'm your woman," she cried. "You come in, Mrs.----"
+
+"Bindle!" prompted Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"You come in, Mrs. Bindle, you got the woman you want in Martha 'Opton.
+Us women 'ave stood this sort of thing long enough. I've always said
+so."
+
+She led the way into an airless little parlour, in which a case of
+wax-fruit, a dusty stuffed dog and a clothes-horse hung with the
+familiarities of Mrs. Hopton's laundry, first struck the eye.
+
+"I've always said," continued Mrs. Hopton, "that us women was too meek
+and mild by half in the way we takes things. My man's a fool," she added
+with conviction. "'E's that easily led by them arbitrators, that's wot I
+call 'em, that they makes 'im do just wotever they wants, dirty, lazy
+set o' tykes. Never done a day's work in their lives, they 'aven't, not
+one of 'em."
+
+"That's what I say," cried Mrs. Bindle, for once in her life finding a
+congenial spirit outside the walls of the Alton Road Chapel. "I've
+locked up my house," she continued, "and put a note on the door that
+I've struck too."
+
+The effect of these words upon Mrs. Hopton was startling. Her head went
+back like that of a chicken drinking, her hands rose once more to her
+hips, and her huge frame shook and pulsated as if it contained a
+high-power motor-engine. Mrs. Bindle gazed at her with widened eyes.
+
+"Her-her-her!" came in deep, liquid gutturals from Mrs. Hopton's lips.
+"Her-her-her!" Then her head came down again, and Mrs. Bindle saw that
+the grim lips were parted, displaying some very yellow, unprepossessing
+teeth. Mrs. Hopton was manifesting amusement.
+
+Without further comment, Mrs. Hopton left the room. In her absence, Mrs.
+Bindle proceeded to sum-up her character from the evidence that her home
+contained. The result was unfavourable. She had just decided that her
+hostess was dirty and untidy, without sense of decency or religion, when
+Mrs. Hopton re-entered. In one hand she carried a piece of paper, in the
+other a small ink-bottle, out of which an orange-coloured pen-holder
+reared its fluted length.
+
+Clearing a space on the untidy table, she bent down and, with squared
+elbows and cramped fingers, proceeded to scrawl the words: "I have
+struck too. M. Hopton."
+
+Then, straightening herself, she once more threw back her head, and
+another stream of "Her-her-her's" gushed towards the ceiling.
+
+"Now I'll come with you," she said at length. Without waiting to don
+cloak or bonnet, she proceeded to pin the notice on the front door,
+which she bolted on the inside. She then left by the scullery door,
+locking it, just as Mrs. Bindle had done, and carrying with her the key.
+
+Although Mrs. Bindle felt that she suffered socially from being seen
+with the lumbering, untidy Mrs. Hopton, she regarded it as a sacrifice
+to a just cause. It was not long, however, before she discovered that
+she had recruited, not a lieutenant, but a leader.
+
+Seizing the list of names and addresses from her companion's hand, Mrs.
+Hopton glanced at it and turned in the direction of the street in which
+lived the timid Mrs. Gilkes. As they walked, Mrs. Bindle told the story
+of Mrs. Gilkes's cowardice, drawing from the Amazon-like Mrs. Hopton the
+significant words "Leave 'er to me."
+
+"Now then, none of this," was her greeting to Mrs. Gilkes as she opened
+her front door. "Out you comes and joins the strike-breakers. None o'
+your nonsense or----" she paused significantly.
+
+Mrs. Gilkes protested her cowardice, she grovelled, she dragged in her
+sister, Mary, and the wrathful Gilkes; but without avail. Almost before
+she knew what had happened, she was walking between Mrs. Hopton and
+Mrs. Bindle, the back-door key clasped in one hand, striving to tie the
+strings of her bonnet beneath a chin that was obviously too shallow for
+the purpose. In her heart was a great terror; yet she was conscious of a
+strange and not unpleasant thrill at the thought of her own daring. She
+comforted herself with Mrs. Hopton's promise of protection against her
+lord's anger.
+
+The overpowering personality of Mrs. Hopton was too much for the other
+wives. The one or two who made a valiant endeavour to stand out were
+overwhelmed by her ponderous ridicule, which bordered upon intimidation.
+
+"'Ere, get a pen an' ink," she would cry and, before the reluctant
+housewife knew what had happened, she had announced that she too had
+struck, and Mrs. Hopton's army had been swelled by another recruit.
+
+At one house they found the husband about to sit down to an early
+dinner. That gave Mrs. Hopton her chance.
+
+"You lazy, guzzling, good-for-nothing son of a God-damn loafer!" she
+shouted, her deep voice throbbing with passion. "Call yourself a man?
+Fine sort of man you are, letting your wife work and slave while you
+strike and fill your belly with beef and beer. I've seen better things
+than you thrown down the sink, that I 'ave."
+
+At the first attack, the man had risen from the table in bewilderment.
+As Mrs. Hopton emptied upon him the vials of her anger, he had slowly
+retreated towards the scullery door. She made a sudden movement in his
+direction; he turned--wrenched open the door, and fled.
+
+"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mrs.----"
+
+"Bolton," said the neat little woman.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bolton," said Mrs. Hopton; "but we're going to break
+this 'ere strike, me and Mrs. Bindle and all these other ladies." She
+waved her hand to indicate the army she had already collected.
+
+Then she went on to explain; but Mrs. Bolton was adamant against all her
+invitations to join the emancipationists.
+
+"I suppose we got to fight your battle," Mrs. Hopton cried, and
+proceeded to drench her victim with ridicule; but Mrs. Bolton stood
+fast, and the strike-breakers had to acknowledge defeat.
+
+It was Mrs. Bindle's idea that they should hold a meeting outside the
+organising secretary's house. The suggestion was acclaimed with
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Let's get a tidy few, first," counselled Mrs. Hopton. "It'll make 'im
+think 'arder."
+
+At the end of an hour, even Mrs. Hopton was satisfied with the number of
+her supporters, and she gave the word for the opening of hostilities.
+
+That afternoon, just as he was rising from an excellent meal, Mr. James
+Cunham was surprised to find that his neatly-kept front-garden was
+filled with women, while more women seemed to occupy the street.
+Neighbours came out, errand-boys called to friends, that they might not
+miss the episode, children paused on their way to school; all seemed to
+realise the dramatic possibilities of the situation.
+
+Mrs. Hopton played a fugue upon Mr. Cunham's knocker, bringing him to
+the door in person.
+
+"Well, monkey-face," she boomed. There was a scream of laughter from her
+followers.
+
+Mr. Cunham started back as if he had been struck.
+
+"Want to starve us, do you?" continued Mrs. Hopton.
+
+"What's all this about?" he enquired, recovering himself. He was a man
+accustomed to handling crowds, even unfriendly crowds; but never had he
+encountered anything like the cataract of wrathful contumely that now
+poured from Mrs. Hopton's lips.
+
+"Just 'ad a good dinner, I suppose," she cried scornfully. "Been
+enjoyin' it, eh? Cut from the joint and two vegs, puddin' to follow,
+with a glass of stout to wash it down. That the meenyou, eh? What does
+it cost you when our men strike? Do you 'ave to keep 'alf a dozen
+bellies full on a pound a week?"
+
+There was a murmur from the women behind her, a murmur that Mr. Cunham
+did not like.
+
+"Nice little 'ouse you got 'ere," continued Mrs. Hopton critically, as
+she peered into the neat and well-furnished hall. "All got out o'
+strikes," she added over her shoulder to her companions. "All got on the
+do-nothin'-at-all-easy-purchase-system."
+
+This time there was no mistaking the menace in the murmur from the women
+behind her.
+
+"You're a beauty, you are," continued Mrs. Hopton. "Not much sweat about
+your lily brow, Mr. Funny Cunham."
+
+Mr. Cunham felt that the time had come for action.
+
+"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Why have you come here, and
+who are you?"
+
+"Who are we?" cried Mrs. Hopton scornfully. "He asks who we are," she
+threw over her shoulder.
+
+Again there was an angry murmur from the rank and file.
+
+"We're the silly fools wot married the men you brought out on strike,"
+said Mrs. Hopton, looking the organising secretary up and down as if he
+were on show. "Creases in 'is trousers, too," she cried. "You ain't 'alf
+a swell. Well, we just come to tell you that the strike's orf, because
+we've struck. Get me, Steve?"
+
+"We've declared a lock-out," broke in Mrs. Bindle with inspiration.
+
+Back went Mrs. Hopton's head, up went her hands to her hips, and
+deep-throated "Her-her-her's" poured from her parted lips.
+
+"A lock-out!" she cried. "Her-her-her, a lock-out! That's the stuff to
+give 'em!" and the rank and file took up the cry and, out of the
+plenitude of his experience, Mr. Cunham recognised that the crowd was
+hopelessly out of hand.
+
+"Are we down-hearted?" cried a voice, and the shrieks of "No!" that
+followed confirmed Mr. Cunham in his opinion that the situation was not
+without its serious aspect.
+
+He was not a coward and he stood his ground, listening to Mrs. Hopton's
+inspiring oratory of denunciation. It was three o'clock before he saw
+his garden again--a trampled waste; an offering to the Moloch of
+strikes.
+
+"Damn the woman!" he cried, as, shutting the door, he returned to the
+room he used as an office, there to deliberate upon this new phase of
+the situation. "Curse her!"
+
+
+III
+
+It was nearly half-past ten that night when Bindle tip-toed up the
+tiled-path leading to the front door of No. 7 Fenton Street.
+
+Softly he inserted his key in the lock and turned it; but the door
+refused to give. He stepped back to gaze up at the bedroom window; there
+was no sign of a light.
+
+It suddenly struck him that the piece of paper on the door was not the
+same in shape as that he had seen at dinner-time. It was too dark to see
+if there was anything written on it. Taking a box of matches from his
+pocket, he struck a light, shielding it carefully so that it should
+shine only on the paper.
+
+His astonishment at what he read caused him to forget the lighted match,
+which burnt his fingers.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "If this ain't it," and once more he
+read the sinister notice:
+
+     "You have struck. We women have declared a lock-out.
+
+     "E. BINDLE."
+
+After a few minutes' cogitation, he tip-toed down the path and round to
+the back of the house; but the scullery door was inflexible in its
+inhospitality.
+
+He next examined the windows. Each was securely fastened.
+
+"Where'm I goin' to sleep?" he muttered, as once more he tip-toed up the
+path.
+
+After a further long deliberation, he lifted the knocker, gave three
+gentle taps--and waited. As nothing happened, he tried four taps of
+greater strength. These, in turn, produced no response. Then he gave a
+knock suggestive of a telegraph boy, or a registered letter. At each
+fresh effort he stepped back to get a view of the bedroom window.
+
+He fancied that the postman-cum-telegraph-boy's knock had produced a
+slight fluttering of the curtain. He followed it up with something that
+might have been the police, or a fire.
+
+As he stepped back, the bedroom-window was thrown up, and Mrs. Bindle's
+head appeared.
+
+"What's the matter?" she cried.
+
+"I can't get in," said Bindle.
+
+"I know you can't," was the uncompromising response, "and I don't mean
+you shall."
+
+"But where'm I goin' to sleep?" he demanded, anxiety in his voice.
+
+"That's for you to settle."
+
+"'Ere, Lizzie, come down an' let me in," he cried, falling to cajolery.
+
+For answer Mrs. Bindle banged-to the window. He waited expectantly for
+the door to be opened.
+
+At the end of five minutes he realised that Mrs. Bindle had probably
+gone back to bed.
+
+"Well, I can't stay 'ere all the bloomin' night, me with various veins
+in my legs," he muttered, conscious that from several windows interested
+heads were thrust.
+
+Fully convinced that Mrs. Bindle was not on her way down to admit him,
+he once more fell back upon the knocker, awakening the echoes of Fenton
+Street.
+
+At the sound of the window-sash being raised, he stepped back and looked
+up eagerly.
+
+"'Ere, wot the ----!"
+
+Something seemed to flash through the night, and he received the
+contents of the ewer full in the face.
+
+"That'll teach you to come waking me up at this time of night," came the
+voice of Mrs. Bindle, who, a moment later, retreated into the room.
+Bindle, rightly conjecturing that she had gone for more water, retired
+out of reach.
+
+"You soaked me through to the skin," he cried, when she re-appeared.
+
+"And serve you right, too, you and your strikes."
+
+"But ain't you goin' to let me in?"
+
+"When the strike's off the lock-out'll cease," was the oracular retort.
+
+"But I didn't want to strike," protested Bindle.
+
+"Then you should have been a man and said so, instead of letting that
+little rat make you do everything he wants, him sitting down to a good
+dinner every day, all paid for out of strikes."
+
+There were sympathetic murmurs from the surrounding darkness.
+
+"But----" began Bindle.
+
+"Don't let me 'ear anything more of you to-night, Joe Bindle," came Mrs.
+Bindle's uncompromising voice, "or next time I'll throw the jug an' all
+at you," and with that she banged-to the window in a way that convinced
+Bindle it was useless to parley further.
+
+"Catch my death o' cold," he grumbled, as he turned on a reluctant heel
+in the direction of Fulham High Street, with the intention of claiming
+hospitality from his sister-in-law, Mrs. Hearty. "Wot am I goin' to do
+for duds," he added. "Funny ole bird I should look in one of 'Earty's
+frock-coats."
+
+
+IV
+
+The next morning at nine o'clock, the wives of the strikers met by
+arrangement outside the organising secretary's house; but the strikers
+themselves were before them, and Mr. Cunham found himself faced with the
+ugliest situation he had ever encountered.
+
+At the sight of the groups of strikers, the women raised shrill cries.
+The men, too, lifted their voices, not in derision or criticism of their
+helpmates; but at the organising secretary.
+
+The previous night the same drama that had been enacted between Bindle
+and Mrs. Bindle had taken place outside the houses of many of the other
+strikers, with the result that they had become "fed up to the blinkin'
+neck with the whole ruddy business."
+
+"Well!" cried Mrs. Hopton as, at the head of her legion of Amazons, she
+reached the first group of men. "How jer like it?"
+
+The men turned aside, grumbling in their throats.
+
+"Her-her-her!" she laughed. "Boot's on the other foot now, my pretty
+canaries, ain't it? Nobody mustn't do anythink to upset you; but you can
+do what you streamin' well like, you lot o' silly mugs!
+
+"Wotjer let that little rat-faced sniveller turn you round 'is little
+finger for? You ain't men, you're just Unionists wot 'ave got to do wot
+'e tells you. I see 'im yesterday," she continued after a slight pause,
+"'aving a rare ole guzzle wot you pays for by striking. 'Ow much does it
+cost 'im? That's wot I want to know, the rat-faced little stinker!"
+
+At that moment "the rat-faced little stinker" himself appeared, hat on
+head and light overcoat thrown over his arm. He smiled wearily, he was
+not favourably impressed by the look of things.
+
+His appearance was the signal for shrill shouts from the women, and a
+grumbling murmur from the men.
+
+"'Ere's Kayser Cunham," shouted one woman, and then individual cries
+were drowned in the angry murmur of protest and recrimination.
+
+Mr. Cunham found himself faced by the same men who, the day before, had
+greeted his words with cheers. Now they made it manifest that if he did
+not find a way out of the strike difficulty, there would be trouble.
+
+"Take that!" roared Mrs. Hopton hoarsely, as she snatched something from
+a paper-bag she was carrying, and hurled it with all her might at the
+leader. Her aim was bad, and a small man, standing at right angles to
+the Union secretary, received a large and painfully ripe tomato full on
+the chin.
+
+Mrs. Hopton's cry was a signal to the other women. From beneath cloaks
+and capes they produced every conceivable missile, including a number of
+eggs far gone towards chickenhood. With more zeal than accuracy of aim,
+they hurled them at the unfortunate Mr. Cunham. For a full minute he
+stood his ground valiantly, then, an egg catching him between the eyes
+brought swift oblivion.
+
+The strikers, however, did not manifest the courage of their leader.
+Although intended for the organising secretary, most of the missiles
+found a way into their ranks. They wavered and, a moment after, turned
+and fled.
+
+Approaching nearer, the women concentrated upon him whom they regarded
+as responsible for the strike, and their aim improved. Some of their
+shots took effect on his person, but most of them on the front of the
+house. Three windows were broken, and it was not until Mrs. Cunham came
+and dragged her egg-bespattered lord into the passage, banging-to the
+street door behind her, that the storm began to die down.
+
+By this time a considerable crowd of interested spectators had gathered.
+
+"Just shows you what us women can do if we've a mind to do it," was the
+oracular utterance of one woman, who prided herself upon having been the
+first arrival outside the actual combatants.
+
+"She ain't 'alf a caution," remarked a "lady friend," who had joined her
+soon after the outbreak of hostilities. "That big un," she added,
+nodding in the direction of Mrs. Hopton, who, arms on hips and head
+thrown back, was giving vent to her mirth in a series of
+"her-her-her's."
+
+A policeman pushed his way through the crowd towards the gate. Mrs.
+Hopton, catching sight of him, turned.
+
+"You take my advice, my lad, and keep out of this."
+
+The policeman looked about him a little uncertainly.
+
+"What's the matter?" he enquired.
+
+"It's a strike and a lock-out," she explained, "an' they got a bit
+mixed. We ain't got no quarrel with a good-looking young chap like you,
+an' we're on private premises, so you just jazz along as if you 'adn't
+seen us."
+
+A smile fluttered about the lips of the policeman. The thought of
+passing Mrs. Hopton without seeing her amused him; still he took no
+active part in the proceedings, beyond an official exhortation to the
+crowd to "pass along, please."
+
+"Well, ladies," said Mrs. Hopton, addressing her victorious legions;
+"it's all over now, bar shoutin'. If any o' your men start a-knockin'
+you about, tell 'em we're a-goin' to stand together, and just let me
+know. We'll come round and make 'em wish they'd been born somethink wot
+can't feel."
+
+That morning the manager at the yard received a deputation from the men,
+headed by Mr. Cunham, who, although he had changed his clothes and taken
+a hot bath, was still conscious of the disgusting reek of rotten eggs.
+Before dinner-time the whole matter had been settled, and the men were
+to resume work at two o'clock.
+
+Bindle reached home a few minutes to one, hungry and expectant. The
+notice had been removed from the front door, and he found Mrs. Bindle in
+the kitchen ironing.
+
+"Well," she demanded as he entered, "what do you want?"
+
+"Strike's orf, Lizzie," he said genially, an anxious eye turned to the
+stove upon which, however, there were no saucepans. This decided him
+that his dinner was in the oven.
+
+"I could have told you that!" was her sole comment, and she proceeded
+with her ironing.
+
+For a few minutes Bindle looked about him, then once more fixed his gaze
+upon the oven.
+
+"Wot time you goin' to 'ave dinner, Lizzie?" he asked, with all the
+geniality of a prodigal doubtful of his welcome.
+
+"I've had it." Mrs. Bindle's lips met in a hard, firm line.
+
+"Is mine in the oven?"
+
+"Better look and see."
+
+He walked across to the stove and opened the oven door. It was as bare
+as the cupboard of Mrs. Hubbard.
+
+"Wot you done with it, Lizzie?" he enquired, misgiving clutching at his
+heart.
+
+"What have I done with what?" she snapped, as she brought her iron down
+with a bang that caused him to jump.
+
+"My little bit o' groundsel."
+
+"When you talk sense, perhaps I can understand you."
+
+"My dinner," he explained with an injured air.
+
+"When you've done a day's work you'll get a day's dinner, and not
+before."
+
+"But the strike's orf."
+
+"So's the lock-out."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Don't stand there 'butting' me. Go and do some work, then you'll have
+something to eat," and Mrs. Bindle reversed the pillow-case she was
+ironing, and got in a straight right full in the centre of it, whilst
+Bindle turned gloomily to the door and made his way to The Yellow
+Ostrich, where, over a pint of beer and some bread and cheese, he
+gloomed his discontent.
+
+"No more strikes for me," said a man seated opposite, who was similarly
+engaged.
+
+"Same 'ere," said Bindle.
+
+"Bob Cunham got a flea in 'is ear this mornin' wot 'e's been askin'
+for," said the man, and Bindle, nodding in agreement, buried his face in
+his pewter.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Hopton was explaining to a few personal friends how it
+all had happened.
+
+"She done good work in startin' of us orf," was her tribute to Mrs.
+Bindle; "but I can't say I takes to her as a friend."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY
+
+
+I
+
+Shoooooooossssh!
+
+Like a silver flash, the contents of a water-jug descended upon the back
+of the moth-eaten sandy cat, engaged in excavating Mrs. Bindle's
+geranium-bed.
+
+A curve of yellow, and Mrs. Sawney's "Sandy" had taken the dividing wall
+between No. 7 and No. 9 in one movement--and the drama was over.
+
+Mrs. Bindle closed her parlour-window. She refilled the jug, placing it
+ready for the next delinquent and then returned to her domestic duties.
+
+On the other side of a thin partitioning wall, Mrs. Sawney left the
+window from which she had viewed her cat's attack upon Mrs. Bindle's
+geranium-bed, and Mrs. Bindle's counter-attack upon Sandy's person.
+Passing into the small passage she opened the front door, her lips set
+in a determined line.
+
+"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," she called, in accents that caused Sandy,
+now three gardens away, to pause in the act of shaking his various
+members one by one, in an endeavour to disembarrass himself of the
+contents of Mrs. Bindle's water-jug.
+
+"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," cooed Mrs. Sawney. "Poor pussy."
+
+The tone of his mistress' voice rendered Sandy suspicious as to her
+intentions. He was a cat who had fought his way from kittenhood to a
+three-year-old, and that with the loss of nothing more conspicuous than
+the tip of his left ear. He could not remember the time when he had not
+been engaged in warfare, either predatory or defensive, and he had
+accumulated much wisdom in the process.
+
+"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. Puss, puss, puss." Mrs. Sawney's tone grew
+in mellowness as her anger increased. "Poor pussy."
+
+With a final shake of his near hind leg, Sandy put two more gardens
+between himself and that voice, and proceeded to damn to-morrow's
+weather by washing clean over his right ear.
+
+Mrs. Sawney closed her front-door and retired to the regions that knew
+her best. In her heart was a great anger. Water had been thrown over her
+cat, an act which, according to Mrs. Sawney's code of ethics,
+constituted a personal affront.
+
+It was Monday, and with Mrs. Sawney the effect of the Monday-morning
+feeling, coupled with the purifying of the domestic linen, was a sore
+trial to her never very philosophical nature.
+
+"To-morrow'll be _'er_ washing-day," she muttered, as she poked down the
+clothes in the bubbling copper with a long stick, bleached and furred by
+constant immersion in boiling water. "I'll show 'er, throwing water
+over my cat, the stuck-up baggage!"
+
+Late that afternoon, she called upon Mrs. Grimps, who lived at No. 5, to
+return the scrubbing-board she had borrowed that morning. With Mrs.
+Sawney, to borrow was to manifest the qualities of neighbourliness, and
+one of her grievances against Mrs. Bindle was that she was "too stuck up
+to borrow a pin."
+
+Had Sandy heard the sentiments that fell from his mistress's lips that
+afternoon, and had he not been the Ulysses among cats that he
+undoubtedly was, he would have become convinced that a new heaven or a
+new earth was in prospect. As it was, Sandy was two streets away,
+engaged in an affair with a lady of piebald appearance and coy
+demeanour.
+
+When, half an hour later, Mrs. Sawney returned to No. 9, her expression
+was even more grim. The sight of the pink tie-ups with which the white
+lace curtains at No. 7 were looped back, rendered her forgetful of her
+recently expressed sentiments. She sent Sandy at express speed from her
+sight, and soundly boxed Harriet's ears. Mrs. Sawney was annoyed.
+
+
+II
+
+All her life Mrs. Bindle had been exclusive. She prided herself upon the
+fact that she was never to be seen gossiping upon doorstep, or at
+garden-gate. In consequence, she was regarded as "a stuck-up cat"; she
+called it keeping herself to herself.
+
+Another cause of her unpopularity with the housewives of Fenton Street
+was the way she stared at their windows as she passed. There was in that
+look criticism and disdain, and it inspired her neighbours with fury,
+the more so because of their impotence.
+
+Mrs. Bindle judged a woman by her windows--and by the same token
+condemned her. Fenton Street knew it, and treasured up the memory.
+
+It was this attitude towards their windows, more than Mrs. Bindle's
+exclusiveness in the matter of front-door, or back-door gossip, that
+made for her unpopularity with those among whom circumstances and the
+jerry-builder had ordained that she should spend her days. She regarded
+it as a virtue not to be on speaking terms with anyone in the street.
+
+For the most part, Mrs. Bindle and her immediate neighbours lived in a
+state of armed neutrality. On the one side was Mrs. Sawney, a lath of a
+woman with an insatiable appetite for scandal and the mouth of a scold,
+whose windows were, in Mrs. Bindle's opinion, a disgrace; on the other
+was Mrs. Grimps, a big, jolly-looking woman, who laughed loudly at
+things, about which Mrs. Bindle did not even permit herself to think.
+
+In spite of the armistice that prevailed, there were occasions when
+slumbering dislike would develop into open hostilities. The strategy
+employed was almost invariably the same, just as were the forces
+engaged.
+
+These encounters generally took place on Tuesdays, Mrs. Bindle's
+washing-day. To a woman, Fenton Street washed on Monday, and the fact of
+Mrs. Bindle selecting Tuesday for the cleansing her household linen was,
+in the eyes of other housewives, a direct challenge. It was an endeavour
+to vaunt her own superiority, and Fenton Street, despite its cockney
+good-nature, found it impossible to forgive what it regarded as "swank".
+
+The result was that occasionally Fenton Street gave tongue, sometimes
+through the medium of its offspring; at others from the lips of the
+women themselves.
+
+Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had conceived a clever strategy, which never
+failed in its effect upon their victim. On Mrs. Bindle's washing-days,
+when hostilities had been decided on, Mrs. Grimps would go up to the
+back-bedroom window, whilst Mrs. Sawney would stand at her back-door, or
+conversely. From these positions, the fences being low, they had an
+excellent view of the back garden of No. 7, and would carry on a
+conversation, the subject of which would be Mrs. Bindle, or the garments
+she was exposing to the public gaze.
+
+The two women seemed to find a never-ending source of interest in their
+neighbour's laundry. Being intensely refined in all such matters, Mrs.
+Bindle subjected her weekly wash to a strict censorship, drying the more
+intimate garments before the kitchen fire. This evoked frankly-expressed
+speculation between her two enemies as to how anyone could live without
+change of clothing.
+
+In her heart, Mrs. Bindle had come to dislike, almost to dread,
+washing-days, although she in no way mitigated her uncompromising
+attitude towards her neighbours.
+
+When, on the Wednesday morning following one of these one-sided battles,
+Mrs. Bindle went out shopping, her glances at the front-windows of Mrs.
+Grimps's house, or those of Mrs. Sawney, according to the direction she
+took, were steadier and more critical than ever. Mrs. Bindle was not one
+to strike her flag to the enemy.
+
+Soon after nine on the Tuesday morning after Sandy had constituted
+himself a casus belli, Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery carrying a
+basketful of clothes, on the top of which lay a handful of clothes-pegs.
+Placing the basket on the ground, she proceeded to wipe with a cloth the
+clothes-line, which Bindle had put up before breakfast.
+
+The sight of her neat, angular form in the garden was the signal for
+Mrs. Grimps to come to her back door, whilst Mrs. Sawney ascended her
+stairs. A moment later, the back window of No. 9 was thrown up with a
+flourish, and the hard face of Sandy's mistress appeared.
+
+It was a curious circumstance that, although there was never any
+pre-arrangement, Mrs. Sawney always seemed to appear at the window just
+as Mrs. Grimps emerged from her back door, or the order would be
+reversed. Never had they been known both to appear together, either at
+window or at door. Their mutual understanding seemed to be that of the
+ancient pair in the old-fashioned weather-indicator.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Grimps," called Mrs. Sawney from her post of
+vantage.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Sawney," responded Mrs. Grimps. "Beautiful day,
+ain't it?"
+
+"Fine dryin' weather," responded Mrs. Sawney.
+
+"I see you got your washin' finished early yes'day."
+
+"Yes, an' a rare lot there was this week," said Mrs. Sawney, settling
+her arms comfortably upon the window-sill. "You 'ad a tidy bit, too, I
+see."
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Grimps, picking a back-tooth with a hair-pin. "Mr.
+Grimps is like Mr. Sawney, must 'ave 'is clean pair o' pants every week,
+'e must, an' a shirt an' vest, too. I tell 'im he ought to 'ave been a
+millionaire."
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Sawney, "I sometimes wishes my 'usband would be content
+with calico linings to 'is trousers, like some folks I could name. 'E's
+afraid o' them rubbin' 'im, 'e says; but then 'e always was clean in 'is
+'abits."
+
+This remark was directly levelled at Mrs. Bindle's censorship of
+everything appertaining to nether-laundry.
+
+"Well, I must say I sympathises with 'im," remarked Mrs. Grimps,
+returning the hair-pin to where it belonged. "When I sees some folks'
+washing, I says to myself, I says, 'Wot can they wear underneath?'"
+
+"An' well you might, Mrs. Grimps," cried Mrs. Sawney meaningly. "P'raps
+they spend the money on pink ribbons to tie up their lace curtains. It's
+all very well to make a show with yer windows, but," with the air of one
+who has made an important discovery, "you can't be clean unless you're
+clean all over, I says."
+
+Whilst these remarks were being bandied to and fro over her head, Mrs.
+Bindle had been engaged in pegging to the clothes-line the first batch
+of her week's wash. Her face was grimmer and harder than usual, and
+there was in her eyes a cold, grey look, suggestive of an iron control.
+
+"Yes," proceeded Mrs. Grimps, "I always 'ave said an' always shall, that
+it's the underneaths wot count."
+
+Mrs. Bindle stuck a peg in the corner of a tablecloth and, taking
+another from her mouth, she proceeded to the other end of the tablecloth
+and jabbed that, too, astride the line.
+
+"'Always 'ave dainty linjerry, 'Arriet,' my pore mother used to say,"
+continued Mrs. Sawney, "an' I always 'ave. After all, who wants three
+pillow-cases a week?"
+
+This was in the nature of a direct challenge, as Mrs. Bindle had just
+stepped back from attaching to the line a third pillow-case, which
+immediately proceeded to balloon itself into joyous abandon.
+
+"If you _are_ religious, you didn't ought to be cruel to dumb animals,"
+announced Mrs. Grimps, "throwin' water over the pore creatures."
+
+"That sort never is kind to any think but theirselves," commented Mrs.
+Sawney, with the air of one who is well-versed in the ways of the
+devout.
+
+Each time Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery that morning, her two
+relentless neighbours appeared as if by magic, and oblique pleasantries
+ebbed and flowed above her head.
+
+The episode of Mrs. Bindle's lock-out was discussed in detail. The
+"goody-goody" qualities affected by "some people" were commented on in
+relation to the more brutal instincts they occasionally manifested.
+
+The treatment that certain pleasant-spoken husbands, whom it was "a
+pleasure to meet," received from their wives, whose faces were like
+"vinegar on the point of a needle," left both Mrs. Grimps and Mrs.
+Sawney incapable of expressing the indignation that was within them.
+
+When Bindle came home to dinner, he found "Mrs. B. with a temper wot 'ad
+got a nasty edge on it," as he expressed it to one of his mates on his
+return to work. He was too wise, however, to venture an enquiry as to
+the cause. He realised that to ask for the wind might mean reaping the
+whirlwind.
+
+Immediately after the meal, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to clear the lines to
+make room for another batch. She hoped to get done whilst her neighbours
+were at dinner; but she had not been in the garden half-a-minute before
+her tormentors appeared.
+
+"I been thinkin' of keepin' a few fowls," remarked Mrs. Sawney, her
+mouth full of bread and cheese, "jest a 'andful of cocks an' a few
+'ens," and she winked down at Mrs. Grimps, as Mrs. Bindle pegged a lace
+window-curtain on the line, having first subjected it to a vigorous
+rubbing with a duster.
+
+"An' very nice too," agreed Mrs. Grimps; "I must say I likes an egg for
+my tea," she added, "only them cocks do fight so."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't get too many," continued Mrs. Sawney, "say three
+cocks an' three 'ens. They ought to get on nicely together."
+
+These remarks had reference to a one-time project of Mrs. Bindle to
+supply her table with new-laid eggs, in the pursuit of which she had
+purchased three pairs of birds, equally divided as to sex.
+
+"That was the only time I ever enjoyed a bit o' cock-fightin' on my
+own," Bindle was wont to remark, when telling the story of Mrs. Bindle's
+application of the rule of monogamy to a fowl-run.
+
+He had made one endeavour to enlighten Mrs. Bindle upon the fact that
+the domestic cock (she insisted on the term "rooster") had neither
+rounded Cape Turk, nor weathered Seraglio Point; but he was told not to
+be disgusting, Mrs. Bindle's invariable rejoinder when sex matters
+cropped up. He had therefore desisted, enjoying to the full Mrs.
+Bindle's efforts to police her new colony.
+
+In those days, the Bindle's back garden had been a riot of flying
+feathers, belligerent cocks and squawking hens, chivvied about by Mrs.
+Bindle, armed with mop or broom.
+
+Mrs. Sawney and a Mrs. Telcher, who had preceded Mrs. Grimps in the
+occupancy of No. 5, had sat at their bedroom windows, laughing until the
+tears ran down their dubious cheeks and their sides ached. When their
+mirth permitted, they had tendered advice; but for the most part they
+were so weak from laughing that speech was denied them.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's knowledge of the ways of fowls was limited; but it
+embraced one important piece of information--that without "roosters",
+hens would not lay. When Bindle had striven to set her right, he had
+been silenced with the inevitable, "Don't be disgusting."
+
+She had reasoned that if hens were stimulated to lay by the presence of
+the "male bird", then a cavalier each would surely result in an
+increased output.
+
+The fowls, however, had disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and
+thereafter Bindle realised that it was neither safe nor politic to refer
+to the subject. It had taken a plate of rice, hurled at his head from
+the other side of the kitchen, to bring him to this philosophical frame
+of mind.
+
+For weeks afterwards, the children of Fenton Street would greet Mrs.
+Bindle's appearance with strange crowing noises, which pleased them and
+convulsed their parents; for Mrs. Bindle's fowls had become _the_ joke
+of the neighbourhood.
+
+"I must say I likes a man wots got a pleasant word for everyone,"
+remarked Mrs. Sawney, some two hours later, as Mrs. Bindle picked up the
+clothes-basket containing the last of the day's wash, and made for the
+scullery door, "even when 'e ain't 'appy in 'is 'ome life," she added,
+as the scullery door banged-to for the day, and Mrs. Grimps concurred as
+she disappeared, to catch-up with the day's work as best she could, and
+prepare the children's tea.
+
+
+III
+
+That evening at supper, Bindle heard what had been withheld from Mrs.
+Grimps and Mrs. Sawney--Mrs. Bindle's opinion of her neighbours. With
+great dexterity, she managed to link him up with their misdeeds. He
+should have got on as his brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, had got on, and
+then she would not have been forced to reside in a neighbourhood so
+utterly dead to all sense of refinement and proper conduct.
+
+Bindle had come to regard Tuesdays as days of wrath, and he usually
+managed to slip out after supper with as little ostentation as possible.
+Reasoning that religion and cleanliness were productive of such mental
+disturbances, he was frankly for what he called "a dirty 'eathen"; but
+he was wise enough to keep his views to himself.
+
+"If you were a man you'd stop it," she stormed, "allowing me to be
+insulted as I've been to-day."
+
+"But 'ow can I stop you an' them a-scrappin'?" he protested, with
+corrugated forehead.
+
+"You can go in and tell them that you won't have it."
+
+"But then Sawney an' Grimps would start on me."
+
+"That's what it is, you're afraid," she cried, triumphantly. "If you was
+a man you'd hit back; but you're not."
+
+"But I ain't a-goin' to start fightin' because some one says I don't
+wear----"
+
+"Stop it!"
+
+And Bindle stopped it.
+
+"Why don't you do something like Mr. Hearty?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, as
+he pushed back his chair and rose. She was determined not to be deprived
+of her scapegoat, at least not without another offensive.
+
+He paused before replying, making sure that his line of retreat was
+open. The greengrocering success of her brother-in-law was used by Mrs.
+Bindle as a whip of scorpions.
+
+"'Earty don't do things," he replied, sidling towards the door. "'E does
+people," and with footwork that would have made a champion fly-weight
+envious, he was out in the passage before Mrs. Bindle could retort.
+
+Long and late that night she pondered over the indignities to which she
+had been subjected during the day. There were wanton moments when she
+yearned to be able to display to the neighbours the whole of her
+laundry--and Bindle's. Herself a connoisseur of garments that passed
+through the wash-tub, she knew that those of her house could hold their
+own, as joyously white and playful in the breeze as any that her
+neighbours were able to produce.
+
+She had suffered with a still tongue; yet it had not turned aside wrath,
+particularly her own wrath. Instinctively, her thoughts reverted to the
+time when an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were regarded as
+legal tender.
+
+All that night and the next day she pondered. When Bindle returned on
+the Wednesday evening, he found her almost light-hearted. "Gospel
+Bells", Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn, was going with a rare swing, and
+during the meal that followed, she was bordering on the conversational.
+
+Several times he regarded her curiously.
+
+"Somethink's up," he muttered; but, too wise in his experience, he made
+no endeavour to probe the mystery.
+
+For the rest of the week Mrs. Bindle spent every odd moment she could
+spare from her domestic duties in collecting what she mentally described
+as "rubbish". She went through each room with a toothcomb. By Saturday
+night, she had accumulated in the wash-house, a pile of odds and ends
+which, as Bindle said, would have been enough to start a rag-and-bone
+shop.
+
+Curiously enough, Mrs. Bindle did not resent his remark; instead she
+almost smiled, so marked was her expression of grim complacency.
+
+On Sunday at chapel, she sang with a vigour and fervency that attracted
+to her the curious gaze of more than one pair of eyes.
+
+"Mrs. B.'s got somethink in 'er stockin'," mumbled Bindle, as he rose
+from the supper-table that night. "Never seen 'er so cheerio in all my
+puff. I 'ope it ain't drink."
+
+Monday morning dawned, and Mrs. Bindle was up an hour earlier than
+usual, still almost blithe in her manner.
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised if she's a-goin' to run away with ole 'Earty,"
+muttered Bindle, as he took from her almost gracious hands his third
+cup of tea at breakfast.
+
+"You sings like a two-year-old, Lizzie," he ventured. "I like them
+little twiddley bits wot you been puttin' into that 'ymn."
+
+The "twiddley bits" to which Bindle referred was her rendering of
+"bells," as a word of three syllables, "be-e-ells."
+
+"You get on with your breakfast," was her retort; but there was about it
+neither reproach nor rancour.
+
+Again he looked at her curiously.
+
+"Can't make 'er out these last few days," he muttered, as he rose and
+picked up his cap. "Somethink's up!"
+
+Mrs. Bindle proceeded to wash-up the breakfast things to the tune of
+"Hold the Fort." From time to time during the morning, she would glance
+out of the window to see if Mrs. Grimps, or Mrs. Sawney had yet begun to
+"hang-out".
+
+They were usually late; but this morning they were later than usual. It
+was after ten before Mrs. Grimps appeared with the first basket of wet
+clothes. She was followed a few minutes later by Mrs. Sawney.
+
+The two women exchanged greetings, the day was too busy a one for
+anything more.
+
+As they pegged the various items of the week's wash to their respective
+lines, Mrs. Bindle watched from the back-bedroom window, her eyes like
+points of steel, her lips a grim grey line. She was experiencing the
+sensations of the general who sees the enemy delivered into his hands.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had returned to their wash-tubs,
+Mrs. Bindle descended to the scullery, where lay the heap of rubbish she
+had collected during the previous week. With great deliberation she
+proceeded to stuff it into a clothes-basket, by means of which she
+transported the mass to the bottom of the garden, a proceeding which
+required several journeys.
+
+Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps were too busily occupied to concern
+themselves with the movements of their neighbour.
+
+Her task completed, Mrs. Bindle returned to her domestic duties, and in
+due time ate a solitary dinner, Bindle being engaged too far away to
+admit of his sharing it with her. She then proceeded upstairs to perform
+her toilette, as on Monday afternoons she always arranged to go out
+"dressed". This in itself was a direct challenge to Fenton Street, which
+had to stay at home and attend to the cleansing of its linen.
+
+Her toilette finished, Mrs. Bindle slipped into the back bedroom. Below,
+her two neighbours were engaged in hanging-out the second instalment of
+their wash, the first batch having been gathered-in ready for the
+mangle. After that, they would eat their mid-day meal. Although no
+gossip, Mrs. Bindle was not unobservant, and she knew the movements of
+her neighbours as well as they knew hers.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, the front door of No. 7 banged-to. Mrs.
+Bindle, in brown alpaca, a brown bonnet with a dash of purple, and
+biscuit-coloured gloves, was going to see her niece, Millie Dixon, nee
+Hearty, with whom she had arranged to spend the afternoon.
+
+
+IV
+
+"Mrs. Sawney! Mrs. Sawney! Come and look at your clothes!"
+
+Mrs. Grimps, her hands on the top of the fence, shouted her thrilling
+appeal across the intervening garden.
+
+Mrs. Sawney appeared, as if propelled from her scullery door by some
+unseen force.
+
+For a moment she stood blinking stupidly, as dense volumes of smut-laden
+smoke ascended to the blueness of heaven from the garden of No. 7. It
+was only the smoke, however, that ascended. One glance at the piebald
+garments hanging from her linen-lines was sufficient to convince Mrs.
+Sawney of that.
+
+"It's that woman," she almost screamed, as she began to pound at the
+fence dividing her garden from that of Mrs. Bindle. "I'll show 'er."
+
+"Yes; but what about the----" Mrs. Grimps broke-off, stifled by a volume
+of dense black smoke that curled across to her. "Look at them smuts."
+
+Mrs. Bindle had taken the precaution of adding some paraffin and colza
+oil to her bonfire, which was now blazing merrily, sending forth an
+ever-increasing deluge of smuts, as if conscious of what was expected of
+it.
+
+Mrs. Sawney continued to bang on the fence, whilst Mrs. Grimps dashed
+through her house and proceeded to pound at Mrs. Bindle's front door
+with a vigour born of hate and desperation.
+
+"She's gorn out."
+
+The information was vouchsafed by a little boy in petticoats, who had
+toddled uncertainly from the other side of the street, and now stood
+clinging to the railings with grubby hands.
+
+Mrs. Grimps scurried back again to the scene of disaster.
+
+She was just in time to see Mrs. Sawney take what appeared to be the
+tail-end of a header into Mrs. Bindle's back-garden, displaying in the
+process a pair of stockings that owed little to the wash-tub, and less
+to the darning-needle.
+
+"Get some water," she gasped, as she picked herself up and once more
+consigned her hosiery to the seclusion of her skirts. Mrs. Grimps dashed
+into the scullery.
+
+A minute later she re-appeared with a large pail, from which water
+slopped as she walked. With much grunting and a considerable wetting of
+her own clothes, she succeeded in passing it over the fence to her
+neighbour.
+
+With one hand grasping the handle and the other the rim at the base,
+Mrs. Sawney staggered towards the fire and inverted the pail. Then, with
+a scream, she dropped the pail, threw her apron over her head, and ran
+from the cloud of steam and the deluge of blacks that her rash act had
+occasioned.
+
+"'Urt yerself?" enquired Mrs. Grimps, solicitously as she gazed
+mournfully at her ruined "wash", upon which big flakes of black were
+descending like locusts upon the fair lands of Pharaoh.
+
+Mrs. Sawney removed the apron from her head, and blinked up at the sky,
+as if to assure herself that the blessing of sight was still hers.
+
+"The wicked cat!" she vociferated, when she found that no damage had
+been done. "Come on, let's put it out," she exhorted as, with a swift
+movement, she picked up the pail and handed it over the fence to the
+waiting Mrs. Grimps.
+
+Ten minutes later, the fire was extinguished; but the washing was
+ruined.
+
+Mrs. Sawney gazed across the fence at a dishevelled caricature of Mrs.
+Grimps, with the full consciousness that she herself must look even
+worse. She also realised that she had to make the return journey over
+the fence, under the critical eyes of Mrs. Grimps, and that to climb a
+fence without an exposure of leg was an impossibility.
+
+Both women were wet to the skin, as neither had proved expert in the
+handing of brimming pails of water over a wooden fence; both were
+spotted like the pard; both were in their hearts breathing dire
+vengeance upon the perpetrator of the outrage, who just at that moment
+was alighting from a tram at Hammersmith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Throughout that afternoon, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited;
+grim-lipped and hard-eyed they waited. Fenton Street was to see
+something that it had not even dreamed of. Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps
+had decided unanimously to "show 'er."
+
+Their offspring had been instructed that, at the sight of Mrs. Bindle,
+they were to return hot-foot and report.
+
+The children had told their friends, and their friends had told their
+mothers, with the result that not only Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps; but
+every housewife in Fenton Street was on the qui vive.
+
+Soon after six there were cries of "Here she comes," as if Mrs. Bindle
+had been the Boat Race, followed by a sudden stampede of children.
+
+Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps rushed to action-quarters. Mrs. Sawney gave
+a stir to a pail of blacklead and water behind the front door, whilst
+Mrs. Grimps seized a soft broom, which she had saturated in water used
+for washing-up the dinner-things.
+
+The children clustered round the gate, and hung on to the railings.
+Housewives came to their doors, or appeared at their bedroom windows.
+Fenton Street loved Drama, the bigger the "D" with which it was spelled,
+the more they enjoyed it.
+
+Behind their front doors, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited and
+watched. Suddenly the crowd that had attached itself to the railings
+began to melt away, and the babel of clattering voices died down.
+Several women were seen to leave their garden-gates and walk up the
+street. Still the two grim-faced women waited behind their
+"street-doors."
+
+At length, as the last child left the railings and tore up the street,
+both women decided that something must have happened.
+
+The sight of Mrs. Sawney at her door brought Mrs. Grimps to hers, just
+as Harriet, the nine years old daughter of Mrs. Sawney, rushed up
+breathless.
+
+"She's comin'," gasped the child, whereat both women disappeared, Mrs.
+Sawney to grasp the handle of her pail, and Mrs. Grimps to seize her
+broom.
+
+When Mrs. Bindle appeared, the centre of an eddying mass of children,
+with a few women on the outer fringe, she was carrying in her arms a
+child of about five, who was whimpering pitifully. Her bonnet had
+slipped back, her right hand, from which the biscuit-coloured glove had
+been removed, was stained with blood, whilst her umbrella was being
+carried, as if it were a sacred relic, by a curly-headed little lad who
+was living his hour.
+
+At the sight of the procession, Mrs. Sawney let the handle of her pail
+fall with a clang, whilst Mrs. Grimps dropped her broom.
+
+"It's my 'Ector," she screamed, as she bolted down the garden path. "Oh,
+my God! 'e's dead."
+
+"Get some hot water," ordered Mrs. Bindle, as she pushed the mother
+aside and entered the gate. "He's cut his leg."
+
+Followed by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Grimps bolted into the house. There was
+something in Mrs. Bindle's tone that brooked of no delay.
+
+Watched by Mrs. Grimps, Mrs. Sawney, and several of their friends, Mrs.
+Bindle washed the wound and bound it up with clean white rag, in place
+of her own blood-soaked handkerchief, and she did her work with the
+thoroughness with which she did everything.
+
+When she had finished, she took the child in her arms, and for an hour
+soothed it with the assurance that it was "the bravest little precious
+in all the world." When she made to transfer her burden to its mother's
+arms, the uproar that ensued decided Mrs. Bindle to continue her
+ministrations.
+
+It was ten o'clock before she finally left Mrs. Grimps's house, and she
+did so without a word.
+
+"Who'd 'ave thought it!" remarked Mrs. Sawney, as Mrs. Bindle closed the
+gate.
+
+"She's got a way with kids," admitted Mrs. Grimps. "I will say that for
+'er," and in turning back along the dark hall, she fell over the broom
+with which she had intended to greet her neighbour.
+
+Mrs. Sawney returned to her own house and hurled a saucepan at Sandy, a
+circumstance which kept him from home for two days and three nights--he
+was not a cat to take undue risks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MRS. BINDLE ENTERTAINS
+
+
+I
+
+"Bindle!" Mrs. Bindle stepped down from a chair, protected by her
+ironing-blanket, on which she had been standing to replace a piece of
+holly that had fallen from a picture.
+
+She gazed at the mid-Victorian riot about her with obvious pride; it
+constituted her holy of holies. Upon it she had laboured for days with
+soap-and-water and furniture-polish, with evergreen and coloured
+candles, to render it worthy of the approaching festivity. She had
+succeeded only in emphasising its uncompromising atmosphere of coldness
+and angularity.
+
+Antimacassars seemed to shiver self-consciously upon the backs of
+stamped-plush chairs, photo-frames, and what she called "knick-knacks,"
+stared at one another in wide-eyed desolation; whilst chains of coloured
+paper, pale green and yellow predominating, stretched in bilious
+festoons from picture-nail to picture-nail.
+
+On the mantelpiece, in wine-coloured lustres, which were Mrs. Bindle's
+especial glory, two long candles reared aloft their pink nakedness. They
+were never to be lit and they knew it; chilly, pink and naked they
+would remain, eventually to be packed away once more in the
+cardboard-box, from which for years they had been taken to grace each
+successive festivity.
+
+It had always been Bindle's ambition to light these candles, which were
+probably the most ancient pieces of petroleum-wax in the kingdom; but he
+lacked the moral courage.
+
+"Funny thing you can't be clean without stinkin' like this," he had
+mumbled that morning, as he sniffed the air, reeking of turpentine with
+an underlying motif of yellow-soap. "I suppose 'appiness is like drink,"
+he added, "it takes people different ways."
+
+Passing over to the sideboard, Mrs. Bindle gazed down at the
+refreshments: sausage-rolls, sandwiches, rock-cakes, blanc-mange,
+jellies, three-cornered tarts, exuding their contents at every joint,
+chocolate-shape, and other delicacies.
+
+In the centre stood a large open jam-tart made on a meat-dish. It was
+Mrs. Bindle's masterpiece, a tribute alike to earth and to heaven. On
+the jam, in letters contrived out of strips of pastry, appeared the
+exhortation, "Prepare to Meet Thy God."
+
+Bindle had gasped at the sight of this superlative work of art and
+religion. "That's a funny sort o' way to give a cove a appetite," he had
+murmured. "If it 'adn't been Mrs. B., I'd 'ave said it was a joke."
+
+It was with obvious satisfaction that Mrs. Bindle viewed her handiwork.
+At the sight of an iced-cake, sheltering itself behind a plate of
+bananas, she smiled. Here again her devotional instincts had triumphed.
+On the uneven white surface, in irregular letters of an uncertain blue,
+was the statement, "The Wages of Sin is Death."
+
+"Well, well, it ain't my idea of 'appiness."
+
+She span round to find Bindle, who had entered unheard, gazing dubiously
+at the tart bearing the disconcerting legend.
+
+"What's not your idea of happiness?" she demanded.
+
+He grinned genially across at her.
+
+"You'd like beer-bottles on the mantelpiece, I suppose," she continued,
+"and clay pipes and spittoons and----"
+
+"Not for me, Mrs. B.," he retorted; "no one ain't never known me miss
+the fire-place yet."
+
+Mrs. Bindle's lips tightened, as if she were striving to restrain the
+angry words that were eager to leap out.
+
+She had planned a musical evening, with the object of assisting her
+brother-in-law in his aspirations as trainer of the choir at the Alton
+Road Chapel, a post which had recently fallen vacant.
+
+By inviting some of the more humble members of the choir, those on a
+higher social plane than her own would scarcely be likely to accept,
+Mrs. Bindle had thought to further Mr. Hearty's candidature.
+
+She recognised that their influence would be indirect in its action; but
+even that, she decided, would be an asset.
+
+Mr. Hearty had readily consented to lend his harmonium, and had sent it
+round by his van. It took two men and a boy, together with Mr. Hearty
+and Mrs. Bindle, a long time to persuade it along the narrow passage.
+Here it had incontinently stuck for nearly an hour. It was not until
+Bindle returned, to bring his professional experience to bear, that it
+had been coaxed into the parlour.
+
+Christmas was near at hand, and for weeks past the choir had been
+working under forced-draught, practising carols. That had given Mrs.
+Bindle the idea of devoting her evening entirely to seasonable music.
+
+"Wot jer call me for?" demanded Bindle presently, remembering the reason
+of his presence.
+
+"Don't forget to get a pail of coals and put it in the kitchen," she
+ordered.
+
+"We shan't want no coals, Mrs. B., with all that 'ot stuff we got
+a-comin'," he muttered lugubriously. "Why ain't we got a bit o'
+mistletoe?" he demanded.
+
+"Don't be disgusting," she retorted.
+
+"Disgustin'!" he cried innocently. "There ain't nothink disgustin' in a
+bit o' mistletoe."
+
+"I won't have such things in my house," she announced with decision.
+"You've got a lewd mind."
+
+"There ain't nothink lood in kissin' a gal under the mistletoe," he
+demurred, "or under anythink else," he added as an after-thought.
+
+"You're nasty-minded, Bindle, and you know it."
+
+"Well, wot are we goin' to do at a party if there ain't goin' to be no
+kissin'?" he persisted, looking about him with unwonted despondency.
+
+"Mr. Hearty has lent us his harmonium!" she said with unction, gazing
+reverently across at the instrument, which was the pride of her
+brother-in-law's heart.
+
+"But wot's the use of an 'armonium," he complained. "You can't play 'unt
+the slipper, or postman's knock with an 'armonium."
+
+"We're going to sing."
+
+"Wot, 'ymns?" he groaned.
+
+"No, carols," was the retort. "It's Christmas," she added as if by way
+of explanation.
+
+"Well, it don't look like it, and it don't smell like it." He sniffed
+the atmosphere with obvious disgust. "Puts me in mind of 'orse-oils," he
+added.
+
+"That's right, go on," she retorted tartly. "You're not hurting me, if
+you think it." She drew in her lips and crossed her hands in front of
+her, with Mrs. Bindle a manifestation of Christian resignation.
+
+"I don't want to 'urt you, Lizzie; but I ask you, can you see me
+a-singin' carols?" He turned towards her a despondent eye of
+interrogation. "Me, at my age?"
+
+"You're not asked to sing. You can go out and spend the evening swearing
+and drinking with your low companions." She moved over to the
+mantelpiece, and adjusted one of her beloved pink candles. "You'd only
+spoil the music," she added.
+
+"If there wasn't no music there wouldn't be no religion," he grumbled.
+"It's 'armoniums in this world and 'arps in the next. I'd sooner be a
+pussyfoot than play an 'arp."
+
+Mrs. Bindle ignored the remark, and proceeded to re-pile a plate of
+sausage-rolls to a greater symmetry, flicking an imaginary speck of
+dust from a glass-jug of lemonade.
+
+"Now mind," she cried, as he walked towards the door, "I won't have you
+spoiling my evening, you'd better go out."
+
+"An 'usband's cross-roads, or why Bindle left 'ome," he grinned as he
+turned, winked at the right-hand pink candle and disappeared, leaving
+Mrs. Bindle to gaze admiringly at her handiwork. She had laboured very
+hard in preparing for the evening's festivities.
+
+
+II
+
+Half-way down the stairs, Mrs. Bindle paused to listen. Her quick ears
+had detected the sound of voices at the back-door, and what was
+undoubtedly the clink of bottles. Continuing her descent, she entered
+the kitchen, pausing just inside the door.
+
+"That's all right, 'Op-o'-my-thumb. A dozen it is," she heard Bindle
+remark to someone in the outer darkness. There was a shrill
+"Good-night," and Bindle entered the kitchen from the scullery, carrying
+a beer-bottle under each arm and one in either hand.
+
+"Who was that?" she demanded, her eyes fixed upon the bottles.
+
+"Oh! jest a nipper wot 'ad brought somethink for me," he said with
+assumed unconcern.
+
+"What did he bring?" she demanded, her eyes still fixed on the bottles.
+
+"Some beer wot I ordered."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To drink." He looked at her as if surprised at the question.
+
+"I didn't suppose you'd bought it to wash in," was the angry retort.
+"There are four bottles in the cupboard. They'll last till Saturday. Why
+did you order more?" Mrs. Bindle was obviously suspicious.
+
+"P'raps somebody'll get dry to-night," he temporised.
+
+"Don't you tell me any of your wicked lies, Bindle," she cried angrily.
+"You know they're all temperance. How many did you order?"
+
+"Oh, jest a few," he said, depositing the bottles on the lower shelf of
+the dresser. "Nothink like 'avin' a bottle or two up yer sleeve."
+
+"Why have you got your best suit on?" She regarded with disapproval the
+blue suit and red necktie Bindle was wearing. Her eyes dropped to the
+white cuffs that only a careful manipulation of his thumbs prevented
+from slipping off altogether.
+
+"Ain't it the night of the party?" he enquired innocently.
+
+"I told you that I won't have you come in, you with your common ways and
+low talk."
+
+"That's all right," he replied cheerfully. "I'm a-goin' to sit in the
+kitchen."
+
+"And what good will that do you?" she demanded suspiciously. "Another
+time, when I'm alone, you can go out fast enough. Now because I've got a
+few friends coming, nothing will move you."
+
+"But I want to 'ear the music," he protested. "P'raps I'll get to like
+carols if I 'ear enough of 'em," he added, with the air of one who
+announces that some day he hopes to acquire a taste for castor-oil.
+
+"You're enough to try the patience of a saint," she cried, still eyeing
+the bottles of beer. "I suppose you're up to some devilment. It wouldn't
+be you to let me enjoy myself."
+
+"I likes to see you enjoyin' yerself, Lizzie," he protested. "'Ow'd you
+like ole Ginger to run in an'----?"
+
+"If that man enters my house I'll insult him!" she cried, her eyes
+glinting angrily.
+
+"That ain't easy," he replied cheerfully, "unless you was to drink 'is
+beer. That always gets 'is rag out."
+
+"I won't have that man in my house," she stormed. "You shall not pollute
+my home with your foul-mouthed, public-house companions. I----"
+
+"Ole Ging is all right," Bindle assured her, as he proceeded to fetch
+four more bottles from the scullery. "All you got to do is to give 'im
+some beer, play 'All is Forgiven Wot 'Appened on Peace Night,' an' let
+'im stamp 'is feet to the chorus, an' 'e's one of the cheerfullest coves
+wot you'll find."
+
+"Well, you bring him here and see what I'll do," she announced darkly.
+
+"That's all right, Mrs. B., don't you worry. I jest asked 'Uggles to run
+round an' keep me company, and Wilkie may drop in if 'e ain't too busy
+coughin'; but they shan't get mixed up with the canaries--they won't
+want to after wot I'm goin' to tell 'em, an' we'll all be as quiet as
+mice."
+
+"If you bring any of your friends into the parlour, Bindle," she cried,
+"I'll turn the gas out."
+
+"Naughty!" he admonished, wagging at her a playful forefinger. "I ain't
+a-goin' to allow----"
+
+"Stop it!" and with that she bounced out of the kitchen and dashed
+upstairs to the bedroom, banging the door behind her.
+
+"Ain't women funny," he grumbled, as he fetched the remaining four
+bottles of beer from the scullery, and placed them upon the shelf of the
+dresser. "Nice ole row there'd 'ave been if I'd said anythink about
+turnin' out the gas. That's why ole 'Earty's so keen on them choir
+practices. I bet they got a penny-in-the-slot meter, an' everybody takes
+bloomin' good care to leave all their coppers at 'ome."
+
+Overhead, Mrs. Bindle could be heard giving expression to her feelings
+in the opening and shutting of drawers.
+
+"Well, well!" he sighed philosophically, "I suppose you can't 'ave
+everythink, as the cove said when 'e found the lodger 'ad gone orf with
+'is trousers on Bank 'Oliday," and he proceeded to gather together two
+cracked tumblers, which had been censored by Mrs. Bindle as unfit for
+her guests, a large white mug, with a pink band and the remains of a
+view of Margate, and a pint jug with a pink butterfly on the spout.
+
+"We're a-goin' to enjoy ourselves, any-old-'ow," he murmured as, picking
+up a meat-dish from the dresser, he slipped into the parlour, returning
+a moment later with it piled with rock-cakes, sandwiches and
+sausage-rolls. These he hid on the bottom shelf of the dresser, placing
+a pair of boots in front of them.
+
+"Jest in time," he muttered, as Mrs. Bindle was heard descending the
+stairs. "It's--'Ullo!" he broke off, "'ere's the first appetite," as a
+knock was heard at the front door.
+
+For the next ten minutes, Mrs. Bindle was busy conducting her guests
+upstairs to "take off their things." Their escorts waited in the
+passage, clearing their throats, or stroking their chins. Convention
+demanded that they should wait to make a formal entry into the parlour
+with their wives.
+
+With his ear pressed against the kitchen door, Bindle listened with
+interest, endeavouring to identify from their voices the arrivals as
+they passed.
+
+By ten minutes past seven, the sounds in the passage had ceased--the
+guests had all come. In Mrs. Bindle's circle it was customary to take
+literally the time mentioned in the invitation, and to apologise for
+even a few minutes' lateness.
+
+In order that the Montagues should not become confused with the
+Capulets, Bindle had taken the precaution of asking his own friends to
+come to the back door. He had added that the beer would be in the
+kitchen.
+
+Mrs. Bindle had always been immovable in her determination that Bindle's
+"low public-house companions" should not have an opportunity of
+"insulting" her friends from the Alton Road Chapel.
+
+With Mrs. Bindle the first quarter-of-an-hour of her rare social
+gatherings was always a period of anguish and uncertainty. Although
+everybody knew everybody else, all were constrained and ill-at-ease.
+
+Miss Lamb kept twirling her rolled-gold bracelet round her lace-mittened
+wrist, smiling vacantly the while. Miss Death seemed unable to keep her
+hard grey eyes, set far too closely together, from the refreshment
+sideboard, whilst Mrs. Dykes, a tiny woman in a fawn skirt and a
+coral-pink blouse, was continually feeling the back of her head, as if
+anticipating some catastrophe to her hair.
+
+Mrs. Hearty, who began in a bright blue satin blouse, and ended in
+canary-coloured stockings thrust into cloth shoes with paste buckles,
+beat her breast and struggled for breath. Mr. Hearty was negative,
+conversationally he was a bankrupt, whilst Mrs. Stitchley was garrulous
+and with a purpose. She was bent upon talking down the consciousness
+that she had not been invited.
+
+Her excuse for coming, at least the excuse she made to herself, was that
+of chaperoning her daughter, a near-sighted, shapeless girl, with no
+chest and a muddy complexion, who never had and never would require such
+an attention.
+
+The others were just neuter, except Mr. Thimbell, whose acute
+nervousness and length of limb rendered him a nuisance.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was conscious that she was looking her best in a dark blue
+alpaca dress, with a cream-coloured lace yoke, which modesty had
+prompted her to have lined with the material of the dress. To her, the
+display of any portion of her person above the instep, or below the
+feminine equivalent of the "Adam's apple," was a tribute to the Mammon
+of Unrighteousness, and her dressmaker was instructed accordingly.
+
+She moved about the room, trying to make everyone feel at home, and
+succeeding only in emphasising the fact that they were all out.
+
+Everybody was anxious to get down to the serious business of the
+evening; still the social amenities had to be observed. There must be a
+preliminary period devoted to conversation.
+
+After a quarter-of-an-hour's endeavour to exchange the ideas which none
+of them possessed, Mrs. Bindle moved over to Mr. Hearty and whispered
+something, at the same time glancing across at the harmonium. There was
+an immediate look of interest and expectancy on faces which, a moment
+before, had been blank and apathetic.
+
+Mr. Goslett, a little man with high cheekbones and a criminal taste in
+neckwear, cleared his throat; Mr. Hearty surreptitiously slipped into
+his mouth an acid drop, which he had just taken from his waistcoat
+pocket; Mr. Dykes, a long, thin man, who in his youth had been known to
+his contemporaries as "Razor," drew his handkerchief with a flourish,
+and tested Mrs. Bindle's walls as if he were a priest before Jericho.
+
+Some difficulty arose as to who should play Mr. Hearty's beloved
+instrument. Mrs. Stitchley made it clear that she expected her daughter,
+Mabel, to be asked. Mrs. Bindle, however, decided that Mrs. Snarch, a
+colourless woman who sang contralto (her own contralto) and sniffed when
+she was not singing contralto, should preside; her influence with her
+fellow-members of the choir was likely to be greater. Thus in the first
+ten minutes Mrs. Bindle scored two implacable enemies and one dubious
+friend.
+
+Mrs. Snarch took her seat at the harmonium, fidgetted about with her
+skirts and blinked near-sightedly at the book of carols, which seemed
+disinclined to remain open. The others grouped themselves about her.
+
+There was a medley of strange sounds, as each member of the party took
+the necessary steps to ensure purity of vocal tone. Added to this, Mr.
+Dykes pulled his collar away from his throat and stretched his neck
+upwards, as if to clear a passage for the sound he intended to send
+forth. Mr. Goslett pushed his sandy moustache up from his full lips with
+the back of his right forefinger, whilst Miss Stitchley moistened and
+remoistened her thin, colourless lips.
+
+Then they joined together in song.
+
+After a preliminary carol, in which no one seemed to take any particular
+interest, they got off well together with "Good King Wenceslas," a prime
+favourite at the Alton Road Chapel.
+
+This evening it proved an enormous success.
+
+Miss Stitchley's shrillness clashed with Mrs. Bindle's sharpness more
+than in the preceding carol. Mr. Hearty shut his eyes more tightly and
+was woollier, Mr. Dykes got more breath behind his boom, and Mrs. Dykes
+made more mistakes in her "harmony." Mr. Goslett raised his head higher,
+looking more than ever like a chicken drinking, whilst Miss Death's
+thin, upper notes seemed to pierce even Mr. Dykes's boom, just as they
+put Miss Lamb, always uncertain as to pitch, even further off her
+stroke.
+
+Still, everyone enjoyed it immensely. Even Mrs. Stitchley, who confessed
+that she was "no 'and at singin'," croaked a few husky notes, as she sat
+acutely upright, due to a six-and-elevenpenny pair of stays she had
+bought that afternoon, nodding her head and beating time.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley never lost an opportunity of making clear her position in
+regard to music.
+
+"I'm musical, my dear," she would say. "It's in the fambly; but I don't
+sing, I 'as spasms, you know." She volunteered this information much as
+a man might seek to excuse his inability to play the French horn by
+explaining that he is addicted to bass viol.
+
+"Now that's what I call a carol," said Mrs. Stitchley, endeavouring to
+prevent the upper portion of her stay-busk from burying itself in her
+flesh. Then, with sudden inspiration, she cried, "Encore! Encore!" and
+made a motion to clap her hands; but the stay-busk took the opportunity
+of getting in a vicious dig. With a little yelp of pain, Mrs.
+Stitchley's hands flew to her rescue.
+
+Everybody was too pleased with "Good King Wenceslas" to trouble about
+Mrs. Stitchley's stay-busk. The word "encore," however, had given them
+an idea. Mr. Hearty looked interrogatingly at Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Do you think----" he began.
+
+"Shall we have it again?" she queried, and there was a chorus of pleased
+acquiescence. Everybody was determined to put a little bit more into the
+encore than into the original rendering. There was only one dissentient
+voice, that of Mr. Dykes, who was eager for "The First Noel," which gave
+him such a chance for individual effort. When out with the Chapel
+Christmas singers, Mr. Dykes had been known to awaken as many as six
+streets with a single verse of that popular carol.
+
+Mrs. Bindle almost smiled. Her party was proving a success.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley, still holding the top of her stay-busk in her left hand,
+nodded approval, her beady little eyes fixed upon the singers. She was
+awaiting an opportunity to bring from her pocket a half-quartern bottle
+containing what, if she had been caught drinking it, she would have
+described as clove-water, taken medicinally.
+
+To give colour to her assertion, she always chewed a clove after each
+reference to the bottle.
+
+At The Golden Horse, Mrs. Stitchley's clove-water was known as Old Tom
+Special.
+
+For an hour Mrs. Bindle's guests sang, encoring themselves with
+enthusiasm. Mr. Dykes got in his famous "Noel," he pronounced it
+"No-ho-hell," and everyone else seemed satisfied, if a little sore of
+throat.
+
+It was half-past eight when Mrs. Bindle decided that the time had come
+for refreshments.
+
+Throughout the evening her ears had been keenly alert for sounds from
+the kitchen; but beyond a suppressed hum of voices, she could detect
+nothing; still she was ill-at-ease. If Mrs. Hearty, for instance, knew
+that Bindle was in the house, she would certainly go over to the enemy.
+
+In the matter of catering for her guests Mrs. Bindle had nothing to
+learn. She was a good cook and delighted in providing well for those she
+entertained. Her sausage-rolls, straightforward affairs in which the
+sausage had something more than a walking-on part, were famous among her
+friends. Her blanc-mange, jam puffs, rock-cakes, and sandwiches had
+already established her reputation with those who had been privileged to
+taste them. She basked in the sunshine of the praise lavished on what
+she provided. Without it she would have felt that her party was a
+failure.
+
+This evening there was no lack of approval, cordially expressed. Mrs.
+Stitchley, who purposely had partaken of a light luncheon and no tea,
+was particularly loud in her encomiums, preluding each sausage-roll she
+took, from the sixth onwards, with some fresh adjective.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was almost happy.
+
+She was in the act of pouring out a glass of lemonade for Miss Lamb,
+when suddenly she paused. An unaccustomed sound from the kitchen had
+arrested her hand. Others heard it too, and the hum of conversation
+died away into silence, broken only by Mr. Hearty's mastication of a
+sausage-roll.
+
+Through the dividing wall came the sound of a concertina. Mrs. Bindle
+put down the jug and turned towards the door. As she did so a thin,
+nasal voice broke into song:
+
+    For 'e was oiled in every joint,
+    A bobby came up who was standin' point.
+    He blew 'is whistle to summon more,
+    Bill got 'ome on the point of 'is jaw.
+    Then 'e screamed, an' kicked, an' bit their knees,
+    As each grabbed a leg or an arm by degrees.
+    An' that's 'ow Bill Morgan was taken 'ome
+    On the night of 'is first wife's funeral.
+
+The verse was followed by a full-throated chorus, accompanied by a
+pounding as if someone were hurling bricks about.
+
+After that came silence; but for the hum of conversation, above which
+rose Bindle's voice forbidding further singing until "them next door
+'ave 'ad a go."
+
+The guests looked at one another in amazement. The set expression of
+Mrs. Bindle's face hardened, and the lines of her mouth became grim. Her
+first instinct had been to rush to the kitchen; but she decided to wait.
+She did not want a scene whilst her guests were there.
+
+Gradually the carol-singers returned to their plates and glasses, and
+Mr. Hearty's mastication was once more heard in their midst. Mr. Hearty
+always ate with relish.
+
+Unobserved by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Hearty stole out of the parlour on her
+way to investigate; a minute later Mrs. Stitchley followed. The solitude
+of the passage gave her an admirable opportunity of finishing the
+"clove-water" she had brought with her.
+
+When everyone had assured Mrs. Bindle, in answer to her pressing
+invitation to refresh themselves still further, that they "really
+couldn't, not if she were to pay them," she turned once more to Mr.
+Hearty for the necessary encouragement to start another carol.
+
+Their first effort, however, clearly showed that Mrs. Bindle's
+refreshments had taken the edge off their singing. Miss Stitchley had
+lost much of her shrillness, Mrs. Bindle was less sharp and Mr. Hearty
+more woolly. Mr. Dykes's boom was but a wraith of its former self,
+proving the truth of Mrs. Dykes's laughing remark that if he ate so many
+of Mrs. Bindle's sausage-rolls he wouldn't be able to sing at all. Only
+Miss Death was up to form, her shrill soprano still cleaving the
+atmosphere like a javelin.
+
+As the last chords of the carol died away, the concertina in the kitchen
+took up the running, followed a minute later by the same voice as
+before, singing nasally about the adventures of a particularly
+rollicking set of boon-companions who knew neither care nor curfew.
+
+At the first sound, Mrs. Bindle moved swiftly to the door, where she
+paused uncertainly. She was in a quandary. Her conception of good
+manners did not admit of a hostess leaving her guests; still something
+had to be done.
+
+At the conclusion of the verse the voice ceased; but the concertina
+wailed on. Mrs. Bindle drew breath. Her guests gazed at one another in a
+dazed sort of way. Then with a crash came the chorus, rendered with
+enthusiasm:
+
+    We'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,
+    For 'ome's the only place for weary men like us,
+    We'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,
+    For we 'aven't got the money to pay for a bus.
+    For it's only 'alf-past two,
+    An' it won't be three just yet.
+    So we'll all roll 'ome, we'll all roll 'ome,
+    An' lay down in the passage to be out of the wet.
+
+The applause that followed was annihilating. Accompanying it again was
+the curious banging sound which Mrs. Bindle had noticed before. She was
+sure she recognised amid the cries of approval, the sound of a woman's
+voice. That decided her. She had already noted the absence of Mrs.
+Hearty and Mrs. Stitchley.
+
+Without so much as an apology to her guests, who stood still gazing
+blankly at one another, Mrs. Bindle slipped out into the passage,
+closing the door behind her, much to the disappointment of the others.
+
+A moment later she threw open the kitchen door, conscious that one of
+the most dramatic moments of her life was at hand.
+
+Through a grey film of tobacco smoke she saw half-a-dozen men, one
+seated on the floor, another on the fender, and two on the table. All
+were smoking.
+
+About the room were dotted bottles and various drinking vessels, mostly
+cups, whilst on the mantelpiece were Bindle's white cuffs, discarded on
+account of their inconvenient habit of slipping off at every movement of
+his hands.
+
+Mrs. Hearty was seated in front of the dresser, holding a glass of beer
+in one hand and beating her breast with the other, whilst opposite to
+her sat Mrs. Stitchley, one hand still clutching the top of her
+stay-busk, an idiotic smirk upon her moist face.
+
+As Mrs. Bindle gazed upon the scene, she was conscious of a feeling of
+disappointment; no one seemed to regard her presence as any deviation
+from the normal. Mrs. Stitchley looked up and nodded. Bindle
+deliberately avoided her eye.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's attention became focussed upon the man seated on her
+fender. In his hands he grasped a concertina, before him were stretched
+a pair of thin legs in tight blue trousers. Above a violent blue necktie
+there rose a pasty face, terminating in a quiff of amazing dimensions,
+which glistened greasily in the gaslight. His heavy-lidded eyes were
+half-closed, whilst in his mouth he held a cigarette, the end of which
+was most unwholesomely chewed. His whole demeanour was that of a man who
+had not yet realised that the curtain had risen upon a new act in the
+drama.
+
+As Mrs. Bindle appeared at the kitchen door, the concertina once more
+began to speak. A moment later the musician threw back his head and gave
+tongue, like a hound baying at the moon:
+
+    For I love my mother, love 'er with all my 'eart,
+    I can see 'er now on the doorstep, the day we 'ad to part.
+    A man that's got a tanner, can always get a wife,
+    But a mother is just a treasure that comes once in a life.
+
+"Now then, ladies and gents, chorus if _you_ please," he cried.
+
+They did please, and soon Mrs. Bindle's kitchen echoed with a
+full-throated rendering of:
+
+    We all love mother, love her all the time,
+    For there ain't no other who seems to us the same.
+    From babyhood to manhood, she watches o'er our lives,
+    For it's mother, mother, mother, bless the dear old name.
+
+It was a doleful refrain, charged with cockney melancholy; yet there
+could be no doubt about the enthusiasm of the singers. Mrs. Hearty
+spilled beer over her blue satin bosom, as a result of the energy with
+which she beat time; Mrs. Stitchley's hand, the one not grasping her
+stay-busk, was also beating time, different time from Mrs. Hearty's,
+whilst two light-coloured knees rose and fell with the regularity of
+piston-rods, solving for Mrs. Bindle the mystery of the sounds like the
+tossing about of bricks she had heard in the parlour.
+
+Ginger was joining in the chorus!
+
+As the singer started the second verse, Mrs. Bindle was conscious that
+someone was behind her. She turned to find Miss Stitchley standing at
+her shoulder. A moment later she realised that the little passage was
+overflowing with carol-singers.
+
+Still she made no sign, not even when Miss Stitchley slipped past her
+and took up a position behind her mother's chair. Mrs. Bindle realised
+that she was faced with a delicate situation.
+
+The second chorus still further complicated matters. Mrs. Bindle was
+sure she heard the haunting refrain mumbled from behind her. She turned
+quickly; but treason came from the other direction. Suddenly Miss
+Stitchley burst into song, and the passage, throwing aside its
+hesitation, joined in, softly it is true, still it joined in.
+
+"Come in, everybody!" cried Mrs. Stitchley, when the chorus ceased,
+momentarily forgetful that it was Mrs. Bindle's kitchen.
+
+"Ain't 'e clever," she added, looking admiringly at the musician, who
+glanced up casually at the mistress of the house. Art Wiggins was
+accustomed to feminine worship and unlimited beer; he regarded them as
+the natural tributes to his genius.
+
+"Come in, the 'ole lot," cried Bindle cheerily, as he proceeded to
+unscrew the stopper of a bottle. "'Ave a wet, Art," he cried, addressing
+the vocalist. "You deserves it."
+
+The remainder of the parlour-party filtered into the kitchen, and Mrs.
+Bindle realised the anguish of a Louis XVIII. Her legions had gone over
+to the enemy.
+
+"Now this," remarked Mrs. Stitchley to Ginger a quarter-of-an-hour
+later, "is wot I calls a cosy evenin'."
+
+To which Ginger grumbled something about not "'oldin' wiv women."
+
+Art Wiggins was the hero of the occasion. He smoked halves of endless
+cigarettes, chewing the remainder; he drank beer like a personified
+Sahara, and a continuous stream of song flowed from his lips.
+
+When at length he paused to eat, Mrs. Stitchley took up the running,
+urged on by Bindle, to whom she had confided that, as a girl, she had
+achieved what was almost fame with, "I Heard the Mavis Singing."
+
+Art Wiggins did not know the tune; but was not to be deterred.
+
+"Carry on, mother," he cried through a mouthful of ham-sandwich, "I'll
+pick it up."
+
+The result was that Art played something strongly reminiscent of
+"Bubbles," whilst Mrs. Stitchley was telling how she had heard the mavis
+singing, to the tune of "Swanee." It was a great success until Art,
+weary of being so long out of the picture, threw "Bubbles," "Swanee,"
+Mrs. Stitchley and the mavis overboard, and broke into a narrative about
+a young man of the name of Bert, who had become enamoured of a lady
+whose abbreviated petticoats made an excellent rhyme for the hero's
+name.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley continued singing; but Art and Bert and the young lady of
+his choice, plus the concertina, left her little or no chance.
+
+Like a figure of retribution Mrs. Bindle stood in the doorway, hard of
+eye and grim of lip, whilst just behind her Mr. Hearty picked nervously
+at the quicks of his fingers.
+
+The other guests had proved opportunists. They had thrown over the
+sacred for the profane.
+
+They came out particularly strong in the choruses.
+
+
+III
+
+"I never remember sich a evenin', my dear," was Mrs. Stitchley's
+valediction. "Stitchley'll be sorry 'e missed it," she added,
+indifferent to the fact that he had not been invited.
+
+She was the last to go, just as she had been the first to arrive.
+Throughout the evening she had applauded every effort of Art Wiggins to
+add to what Bindle called "the 'armony of the evenin'."
+
+"I have enjoyed it, Mrs. Bindle," said Miss Stitchley. "It was lovely."
+
+With these encomiums ringing in her ears, and confirmed by what she
+herself had seen and heard, Mrs. Bindle closed the door and returned to
+the kitchen.
+
+Bindle watched her uncertainly as she tidied up the place, whilst he
+proceeded to arrange upon the dresser the beer-bottles, sixteen in
+number and all empty.
+
+As a rule he could anticipate Mrs. Bindle's mood; but to-night he was
+frankly puzzled. When he had asked Huggles and Wilkes to drop in "for a
+jaw," he had not foreseen that on the way they would encounter Ginger,
+his cousin Art Wiggins and two bosom friends of Art, nor could he be
+expected to foresee that Art went nowhere without his concertina. It was
+as much part of him as his elaborate quiff.
+
+Their arrival had inspired Bindle with something akin to panic. For a
+long time he had striven to mute Art's musical restiveness. At length he
+had been over-ruled by the others, and Art had burst into song about
+Bill Morgan and his first wife's funeral. After that, as well try to dam
+Niagara as seal those lips of song.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's grim silence as she moved about the kitchen disconcerted
+Bindle. He was busy speculating as to what was behind it all.
+
+"Been a 'appy sort of evenin'," he remarked at length, as he proceeded
+to knock the ashes out of his pipe.
+
+Mrs. Bindle made no response; but continued to gather together the
+plates and glasses and place them in two separate bowls in the sink.
+
+"Seemed to enjoy theirselves," he ventured a few minutes later. "Joined
+in the choruses too."
+
+Bindle's remark was like a shot fired at a waterspout, Mrs. Bindle's
+wrath burst its bounds and engulfed him.
+
+"One of these days you'll kill me," she shrilled, dropping into a chair,
+"and then p'raps you'll be 'appy."
+
+"Wot 'ave I done now?" he enquired.
+
+"You've made me ashamed of you," she stormed. "You've humiliated me
+before all those people. What must they think, seein' me married to one
+who will suffer unto the third and fourth generation and----"
+
+"But I can't----"
+
+"You will and you know it," she cried. "Look at the men you 'ad 'ere
+to-night. You never been a proper 'usband to me. Here have I been
+toiling and moiling, inching and pinching, working my fingers to the
+bone for you, and then you treat me like this."
+
+Bindle began to edge almost imperceptibly towards the door.
+
+"See how you've humiliated me," her voice began to quaver. "What will
+they say at the Chapel? They know all about you, whistling on Sundays
+and spending your time in public-houses, while your wife is working
+herself to skin an' bone to cook your meals and mend your clothes.
+What'll they say now they've seen the low companions you invite to your
+home? They'll see how you respect your wife."
+
+Still Bindle made no retort; but in a subdued murmur hummed "Gospel
+Bells," Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn, which he used as a snake-charmer
+uses a flute.
+
+"You're glad, I know it," she continued, exasperated by his silence.
+"Glad to see your wife humiliated. Look at you now! You're glad." Her
+voice was rising hysterically. "One of these days I shall go out and
+never return, and then you'll be----"
+
+Like a tornado the emotional super-storm burst, and Mrs. Bindle was in
+the grip of screaming hysterics.
+
+She laughed, she cried, she exhorted, she reproached. Everything evil
+that had ever happened to her, or to the universe, was directly due to
+the blackness of Bindle's heart and the guiltiness of his conscience. He
+was the one barrier between her and earthly heaven. He had failed where
+Mr. Hearty had succeeded. She poured upon him a withering stream of
+invective,--and she did it at the top of her voice.
+
+At first Bindle stared; then he gazed vaguely about him. He made a
+sudden dive for the cupboard, rummaged about until he found the
+vinegar-bottle. Pouring some out into a saucer, he filled it up with
+water and returned to where Mrs. Bindle sat, slopping the liquid as he
+went.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was now engaged in linking him up with Sodom and Gomorrah,
+the fate that befell Lot's wife and Dr. Crippen. Then, with a final
+scream, she slipped from her chair to the floor, where she lay moaning
+and sobbing.
+
+With an earnest, anxious look in his eyes, Bindle knelt beside her and
+from the saucer proceeded to sprinkle her generously with vinegar and
+water, until in odour she resembled a freshly-made salad.
+
+When he had sprinkled the greater part of the contents of the saucer on
+to her person, he sat back on his heels and, with grave and anxious
+eyes, regarded her as a boy might who has lighted the end of a rocket
+and waits expectantly to see the result.
+
+Gradually the storm of emotion died down and finally ceased. He still
+continued to gaze fixedly at Mrs. Bindle, convinced that
+vinegar-and-water was the one and only cure for hysterics.
+
+Presently, she straightened herself. She moved, then struggling up into
+a sitting position, she looked about her. The unaccustomed smell
+assailed her nostrils she sniffed sharply two or three times.
+
+"What have you been doing?" she demanded.
+
+"I been bringin' you to," he said, his forehead still ribbed with
+anxiety.
+
+"Oh! you beast, you!" she moaned, as she struggled to her feet. "You
+done it on purpose."
+
+"Done wot on purpose?" he enquired.
+
+"Poured vinegar all over me and soaked me to the skin. You've spoilt my
+dress. You----" and with a characteristically sudden movement, she
+turned and fled from the room and upstairs, banging the door with a
+ferocity that shook the whole house.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "An' me thinkin' she'd like me to bring
+'er round," and he slipped out into the parlour, which wore a very
+obvious morning-after-the-party aspect. His object was to give Mrs.
+Bindle an opportunity of returning. He knew her to be incapable of going
+to bed with her kitchen untidy.
+
+He ate a sausage-roll and a piece of the admonitory jam-tart, listening
+keenly for sounds of Mrs. Bindle descending the stairs. Finally he
+seated himself on the stamped-plush couch and absent-mindedly lighted
+his pipe.
+
+Presently he heard a soft tread upon the stairs, as if someone were
+endeavouring to descend without noise. He sighed his relief.
+
+Ten minutes later he rose and stretched himself sleepily. There were
+obvious sounds of movement in the kitchen.
+
+"Now if I wasn't the bloomin' coward wot I am," he remarked, as he took
+a final look round, "I'd light them two candles; but I ain't got the
+pluck."
+
+With that he turned out the gas and closed the door.
+
+"You take those bottles into the scullery and be quick about it," was
+Mrs. Bindle's greeting as he entered the kitchen.
+
+She fixed her eye on the platoon of empty beer-bottles that Bindle had
+assembled upon the dresser.
+
+He paused in the act of digging into his pipe with a match-stick. He had
+been prepared for the tail-end of a tornado, and this slight admonitory
+puff surprised him.
+
+"Well! did you hear?"
+
+Without a word the pipe was slipped into his pocket, and picking up a
+brace of bottles in either hand he passed into the scullery.
+
+As he did so a strange glint sprang into Mrs. Bindle's eyes. With a
+panther-like movement she dashed across to the scullery door, slammed it
+to and turned the key. A second later the kitchen was in darkness, and
+Mrs. Bindle was on her way upstairs to bed.
+
+The continuous banging upon the scullery door as she proceeded leisurely
+to undress was as sweet music to her ears.
+
+That night Bindle slept indifferently well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE COMING OF JOSEPH THE SECOND
+
+
+"Why can't you drink your tea like a Christian?" Mrs. Bindle hurled the
+words at Bindle as if she hoped they would hit him.
+
+He gazed at her over the edge of the saucerful of tea, which he had
+previously cooled by blowing noisily upon it. A moment later he
+proceeded to empty the saucer with a sibilant sound suggestive of
+relish. He then replaced it upon the table.
+
+"Might as well be among pigs, the way you behave at table," she snapped
+and, as if to emphasise her own refinement in taking liquids, she lifted
+her cup delicately to her lips, the little finger of her right hand
+crooked at an awkward angle.
+
+Bindle leaned slightly towards her, his hand to his ear. Ignoring his
+attitude, she replaced the cup in the saucer.
+
+"You done that fine, Mrs. B. I didn't 'ear a sound," and he grinned in
+that provocative manner which always fanned the flame of her anger.
+
+"Pity you don't learn yourself, instead of behaving as you do."
+
+"But 'ow am I to know 'ow a Christian drinks?" he demanded, harking
+back to Mrs. Bindle's remark. "There's 'Earty now, 'e's a Christian; but
+he sucks in 'is whiskers as if 'e was 'ungry."
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me," was the impatient response, as she proceeded to
+pour herself out another cup of tea.
+
+"Wotjer marry me for, then? I told you I was always chatty at
+breakfast."
+
+"Don't be disgusting!" she cried angrily. He stared at her in genuine
+astonishment. "You know I never allowed you to say such things to me
+before we were married."
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered as he pushed across his cup that it
+might be refilled.
+
+"Millie's coming this afternoon."
+
+"Millie!" he cried, his face beaming. "She all right again?"
+
+"Don't be disgusting," she said.
+
+"Disgustin'," he repeated vaguely. Then understanding came to him.
+
+Millie Dixon, nee Hearty, had, some weeks previously, presented her
+husband with "a little Joe." These had been her first words to Charley
+Dixon when he, still partially in the grip of the terror through which
+he had passed, had been taken by the nurse to be introduced to his son
+and heir, whilst a pale, tired Millie smiled bravely up at him.
+
+To Mrs. Bindle the very mention of the word "babies" in mixed company
+was an offence. The news that he was an uncle had reached Bindle from
+Mrs. Hearty, Mr. Hearty sharing his sister-in-law's views upon
+reticence in such delicate and personal matters.
+
+"She goin' to bring it with 'er?" Bindle enquired eagerly; but Mrs.
+Bindle, anticipating such a question, had risen and, going over to the
+sink, had turned on the tap, allowing the question to pass in a rushing
+of water.
+
+"Funny feelin' like that about babies," he muttered as he rose from the
+table, his meal completed. "I suppose that's why she wouldn't let me
+keep rabbits."
+
+"Charley's coming in later; he's going to mend Aunt Anne's musical-box,"
+was Mrs. Bindle's next announcement.
+
+Bindle whistled incredulously.
+
+"What's the matter now?"
+
+"You ain't goin' to trust 'im with Ole Dumb Abraham, are you?" he asked
+in a hushed voice.
+
+"And why not, pray?" she challenged. "Millie says Charley is very clever
+at mending things, and it's never played."
+
+Bindle said nothing. The musical-box had been left to Mrs. Bindle by
+"poor Aunt Anne"--Mrs. Bindle referred to all dead relatives as "poor";
+it was her one unconscious blasphemy. Dumb Abraham, as Bindle called the
+relic, had always been the most sacred among Mrs. Bindle's household
+gods. It had arrived dumb, and dumb it had remained, as she would never
+hear of it leaving the house to be put in order.
+
+If Bindle ever went into the parlour after dark, he was always told to
+be careful of Aunt Anne's musical box. Many a battle had been waged over
+its dumb ugliness. Once he had rested for a moment upon its glassy
+surface a half-smoked cigar, a thoughtless act which had resulted in one
+of the stormiest passages of their married life.
+
+"Well!" challenged Mrs. Bindle, as he remained silent.
+
+"I didn't say anythink," he mumbled, picking up his cap and making for
+the door, thankful that it was Saturday, and that he would be home in
+time to see his beloved niece.
+
+That afternoon Bindle arrived home with his pockets bulging, and several
+parcels of varying sizes under his arm.
+
+"What have you got there?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, who was occupied in
+spreading a white cloth upon the kitchen table.
+
+"Oh! jest a few things for 'is Nibs," was the response.
+
+"For who?"
+
+"The nipper," he explained, as he proceeded to unburden himself of the
+parcels, laying them on the dresser.
+
+"I wish you'd try and talk like a Christian," and she banged a metal
+tea-tray upon the table.
+
+Bindle ignored her remark. He was engaged in taking from its wrappings a
+peculiarly hideous rag-doll.
+
+Mrs. Bindle paused in her preparations to watch the operation.
+
+"What's that for?" she demanded aggressively.
+
+"Millie's kid," he replied, devoting himself to the opening of other
+packages, and producing a monkey-on-a-stick, an inexpensive teddy-bear,
+a jack-in-the-box and several metal animals, which on being blown
+through emitted strident noises.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, wasting money on hideous things
+like that. They'd frighten the poor child to death."
+
+"Frighten 'im!" he cried. "These ain't goin' to frighten 'im. You wait
+an' 'ear wot 'e's got to say about 'em."
+
+"You just clear those things out of my kitchen," was the uncompromising
+rejoinder. "I won't have the poor child sent into convulsions because
+you're a fool."
+
+There was something in her voice which caused Bindle meekly to gather
+together the toys and carry them out of the kitchen and upstairs, where
+he placed them in a drawer devoted entirely to his own possessions.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," he murmured, as he laid them one beside another.
+"And me a-thinkin' they'd make 'im laugh;" with that he closed the
+drawer, determined that, at least, Millie should see the toys that were
+as much a tribute to her as to her offspring.
+
+"Fancy little Millikins 'avin' a kid all of 'er own," he muttered, as he
+descended the stairs, "'er wot I used to dangle on my knee till she
+crowed again. Well, well," he added as he opened the kitchen door, "we
+ain't none of us gettin' younger."
+
+"Wot's that?" enquired Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Merely a sort o' casual remark that none of us ain't puttin' back the
+clock."
+
+Mrs. Bindle sniffed disdainfully, and busied herself with preparations
+for tea.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before that Millikins was comin'?" he enquired.
+
+"Because you're never in as any other decent husband is."
+
+He recognised the portents and held his peace.
+
+When Mrs. Bindle was busy, her temper had a tendency to be on what
+Bindle called "the short side," and then even her favourite hymn,
+"Gospel Bells," frequently failed to stem the tide of her wrath.
+
+"Ain't we goin' to 'ave tea in the parlour?" he enquired presently, as
+Mrs. Bindle smoothed the cloth over the kitchen table.
+
+"No, we're not," she snapped, thinking it unnecessary to add that Millie
+had particularly requested that she might have it "in your lovely
+kitchen," because she was "one of the family."
+
+Although Bindle infinitely preferred the kitchen to that labyrinth of
+furniture and knick-knacks known as the parlour, he felt that the
+occasion demanded the discomfort consequent upon ceremony. He was,
+however, too wise to criticise the arrangement; for Mrs. Bindle's temper
+and tongue were of a known sharpness that counselled moderation.
+
+She had made no mention of the time of Millie's arrival, and Bindle
+decided not to take the risk of enquiring. He contented himself with
+hovering about, getting under Mrs. Bindle's feet, as she expressed it,
+and managing to place himself invariably in the exact spot she was
+making for.
+
+If he sat on a chair, Mrs. Bindle seemed suddenly to discover that it
+required dusting. If he took refuge in a corner, Mrs. Bindle promptly
+dived into it with an "Oh! get out of my way, do," and he would do a
+swift side-step, only to make for what was the high-road of her next
+strategic move.
+
+"Why don't you go out like you always do?" she demanded at one point.
+
+"Because Millikins is comin'," he replied simply.
+
+"Yes, you can stay at home for--when somebody's coming," she amended,
+"but other days you leave me alone for weeks together."
+
+"But when I do stay at 'ome you 'ustles me about like a stray goat," he
+complained, only just succeeding in avoiding a sudden dash on Mrs.
+Bindle's part.
+
+"That's right, go on. Blame everything on to me," she cried, as she made
+a swift dive for the stove, and proceeded to poke the fire as if
+determined to break the fire-brick at the back. "If you'd only been a
+proper 'usband to me I might have been different."
+
+Bindle slipped across the kitchen and stepped out into the passage. Here
+he remained until Mrs. Bindle suddenly threw open the kitchen door.
+
+"What are you standing there for?" she demanded angrily.
+
+"So as not to get in the way," was the meek reply.
+
+"You want to be able to tell Millie that you were turned out of the
+kitchen," she stormed. "I know you and your mean, deceitful ways. Well,
+stay there if you like it!" and she banged the door, and Bindle heard
+the key turn in the lock.
+
+"There's one thing about Mrs. B.," he remarked, as he leaned against the
+wall, "she ain't dull."
+
+When at length the expected knock came, it was Mrs. Bindle who darted
+out and opened the door to admit Millie Dixon, carrying in her arms the
+upper end of what looked like a cascade of white lace.
+
+A sudden fit of shyness seized Bindle, and he retreated to the kitchen;
+whilst aunt and niece greeted one another in the passage.
+
+"Where's Uncle Joe?" he heard Millie ask presently.
+
+"I'm 'ere, Millikins," he called-out, "cookin' the veal for that there
+young prodigal."
+
+A moment later Millie, flushed and happy, fluttered into the room, still
+holding the cascade of lace.
+
+"Darling Uncle Joe," she cried, advancing towards him.
+
+He took a step backwards, a look of awe in his eyes, which were fixed
+upon the top of the cascade.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me, Uncle Joe?" she asked, holding up her
+face.
+
+"Kiss you, my dear, why----" Bindle was seized with a sudden huskiness
+in his voice, as he leaned forward gingerly and kissed the warm red lips
+held out to him.
+
+"Is that It?" he asked, looking down with troubled eyes at Millie's
+burden.
+
+"This is Little Joe," she said softly, the wonder-light of motherhood in
+her eyes, as she placed one foot on the rail of a chair to support her
+precious burden, thus releasing her right hand to lift the veil from a
+red and puckered face, out of which gazed a pair of filmy blue eyes.
+
+"Ooooooosssss." Instinctively Bindle drew a deep breath as he bent a few
+inches forward.
+
+For fully a minute he stood absorbing all there was to be seen of Joseph
+the Second.
+
+"'E ain't very big, is 'e?" he enquired, raising his eyes to Millie's.
+
+"He's only six weeks old," snapped Mrs. Bindle, who had followed Millie
+into the kitchen and now stood, with ill-concealed impatience, whilst
+Bindle was gazing at the infant. "What did you expect?" she demanded.
+
+"Don't 'e look 'ot?" said Bindle at length, his forehead seamed with
+anxiety.
+
+"Hot, Uncle Joe?" enquired Millie, unable to keep from her voice a tinge
+of the displeasure of a mother who hears her offspring criticised.
+
+"I mean 'e don't look strong," he added hastily, conscious that he had
+said the wrong thing.
+
+"Don't be silly, Uncle Joe, he's just a wee little baby, aren't you,
+bootiful boy?" and she gazed at the red face in a way that caused Bindle
+to realise that his niece was now a woman.
+
+"'E's the very spit of 'is old uncle, ain't 'e?" and he turned to Mrs.
+Bindle for corroboration.
+
+She ignored the remark; but Millie smiled sympathetically.
+
+"I 'ad a takin' way with me when I was a little 'un," continued Bindle
+reminiscently. "Why, once I was nearly kissed by a real lady--one with a
+title, too."
+
+"Oh! do tell me, Uncle Joe," cried Millie, looking at him with that odd
+little lift of the brows, which always made Charley want to kiss her.
+She had heard the story a score of times before.
+
+"Well, 'er 'usband was a-tryin' to get into Parliament, an' 'is wife,
+wot was the lady, came round a-askin' people to vote for 'im. Seein' me
+in my mother's arms, she says, 'Wot a pretty child.' You see, Millikins,
+looks was always my strong point," and he paused in the narrative to
+grin.
+
+"Then she bends down to kiss me," he continued, "an' jest at that moment
+wot must I go and do but sneeze, an' that's 'ow I missed a kiss an' 'er
+'usband a vote."
+
+"Poor Uncle Joe," laughed Millie, making a little motion with her arms
+towards Mrs. Bindle.
+
+Without a word, Mrs. Bindle took the precious bundle of lace, out of
+which two filmy eyes gazed vacantly. With a swaying movement she began
+to croon a meaningless tune, that every now and then seemed as if it
+might develop into "Gospel Bells"; yet always hesitated on the brink and
+became diverted into something else.
+
+The baby turned on her a solemn, appraising look of interrogation, then,
+apparently approving of the tune, settled down comfortably to enjoy it.
+
+Bindle regarded Mrs. Bindle with wonder. Into her eyes had crept a
+something he had only once seen there before, and that was on the
+occasion he had brought Millie to Fenton Street when she left home.
+
+Seeing that "Baby" was content, Millie dropped into a chair with a
+tired little sigh, her eyes fixed upon the precious bundle of lace
+containing what would one day be a man.
+
+Mrs. Bindle continued to sway and croon in a way that seemed to Little
+Joe's entire satisfaction.
+
+"Aren't you glad we called him after you, Uncle Joe?" said Millie,
+tearing her eyes with difficulty from the bundle and turning them upon
+Bindle.
+
+"Yer aunt told me," he said simply.
+
+"Oh! I do hope he'll grow up like you, Uncle Joe, dear Uncle Joe," she
+cried, clasping her hands in her earnestness, as if that might help to
+make good her wish.
+
+"Like me?" There was wonder and incredulity in his voice.
+
+"Charley says he _must_ grow up like you, darling Uncle Joe. You
+see----" She broke off as Bindle suddenly turned and, without a word,
+made for the door. A moment later it banged-to behind him arousing Mrs.
+Bindle from her pre-occupation.
+
+"Where's your Uncle gone?" she enquired, lifting her eyes from their
+absorbed contemplation of the flaming features of her nephew.
+
+"He's--he's gone to fetch something," lied Millie. Instinctively she
+felt that this was an occasion that called for anything but the truth.
+She had seen the unusual brightness of Bindle's eyes.
+
+From the passage he was heard vigorously blowing his nose.
+
+"It's them toys he's after," said Mrs. Bindle, with scornful
+conviction.
+
+"Toys?" Millie looked up enquiringly.
+
+"He bought a lot of hideous things for this little precious," and her
+eyes fell upon the bundle in her arms, her lips breaking into a curve
+that Bindle had never seen.
+
+"You see, Millie," she continued, "he doesn't know. We've neither chick
+nor child of----" She broke off suddenly, and bowed her head low over
+the baby.
+
+In a second Millie was on her feet, her arm round Mrs. Bindle's
+shoulders.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lizzie!" she cried, her voice a little unsteady. "Darling
+Aunt Lizzie. I--I know--I----"
+
+At this point Joseph the Second, objecting to the pressure to which he
+was being subjected between the two emotional bosoms, raised his voice
+in protest, just as Bindle entered, his arms full of the toys he had
+bought.
+
+He stood in the doorway, gaping with amazement.
+
+As Mrs. Bindle caught sight of him, she blinked rapidly.
+
+"Don't bring that rubbish in here," she cried with a return to her
+normal manner. "You'll frighten the child out of its life."
+
+"Oh! Uncle Joe," cried Millie, as Bindle deposited the toys on the
+table. "I think you're the darlingest uncle in all the world."
+
+There were tears in the eyes she turned on him.
+
+Mrs. Bindle swung her back on the pair, as Bindle proceeded to explain
+the virtues and mechanism of his purchases. She was convinced that such
+monstrosities would produce in little Joseph nothing less than
+convulsions, probably resulting in permanent injury to his mind.
+
+Whilst they were thus engaged, Mrs. Bindle walked up and down the
+kitchen, absorbed in the baby.
+
+"Auntie Lizzie," cried Millie presently, "please bring Little Joe here."
+
+Mrs. Bindle hesitated. "They'll frighten him, Millie," she said, with a
+gentleness in her voice that caused Bindle to look quickly up at her.
+
+To disprove the statement, and with all the assurance of a young mother,
+Millie seized the rag-doll and a diminutive golliwog, and held them over
+the recumbent form of Joseph the Second.
+
+In an instant a pudgy little hand was thrust up, followed immediately
+after by another, and Joseph the Second demonstrated with all his
+fragile might that, as far as toys were concerned, he was at one with
+his uncle.
+
+Bindle beamed with delight. Seizing the monkey-on-a-stick he proceeded
+vigorously to work it up and down. The pudgy hands raised themselves
+again.
+
+"Oh! let Uncle Joe hold him," cried Millie, in ecstasy at the sight of
+the dawning intelligence on the baby's face.
+
+"Me!" cried Bindle in horror, stepping back as if he had been asked to
+foster-mother a vigorous young rattlesnake. "Me 'old It?" He looked
+uncertainly at Mrs. Bindle and then again at Millie. "Not for an old-age
+pension."
+
+"He'll make him cry," said Mrs. Bindle with conviction, hugging Little
+Joe closer and increasing the swaying movement.
+
+"Oh yes, you must!" cried Millie gaily. "I'll take him, Auntie Lizzie,"
+she said, turning to Mrs. Bindle, who manifested reluctance to
+relinquish the bundle.
+
+"I might 'urt 'im," protested Bindle, retreating a step further, his
+forehead lined with anxiety.
+
+"Now, Uncle Joe," commanded Millie, extending the bundle, "put your arms
+out."
+
+Bindle extended his hands as might a child who is expecting to be caned.
+There was reluctance in the movement, and a suggestion that at any
+moment he was prepared to withdraw them suddenly.
+
+"Not that way," snapped Mrs. Bindle, with all the scorn of a woman's
+superior knowledge.
+
+Millie settled the matter by thrusting the bundle into Bindle's arms and
+he had, perforce, to clasp it.
+
+He looked about him wildly, then, his eyes happening to catch those of
+Joseph the Second, he forgot his responsibilities, and began winking
+rapidly and in a manner that seemed entirely to Little Joe's
+satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, Auntie Lizzie, look," cried Millie. "Little Joe loves Uncle Joe
+already." The inspiration of motherhood had enabled her to interpret a
+certain slobbering movement about Little Joe's lips as affection.
+
+"Oh, look!" she cried again, as one chubby little hand was raised as if
+in salutation. "Auntie Lizzie----" She suddenly broke off. She had
+caught sight of the tense look on Mrs. Bindle's face as she gazed at the
+baby, and the hunger in her eyes.
+
+Without a word she seized the bundle from Bindle's arms and placed it
+in those of her aunt, which instinctively curved themselves to receive
+the precious burden.
+
+"There, darling Joeykins," she crooned as she bent over her baby's face,
+as if to shield from Mrs. Bindle any momentary disappointment it might
+manifest. "Go to Auntie Lizzie."
+
+"'Ere, wot 'ave I----?" began Bindle, when he was interrupted by a knock
+at the outer door.
+
+"That's Charley," cried Millie, dancing towards the door in a most
+unmatronly manner. "Come along, Uncle Joe, he's going to mend the
+musical-box," and with that she tripped down the passage, had opened the
+door and was greeting her husband almost before Bindle had left the
+kitchen.
+
+"Come in here," she cried, opening the parlour door, and hardly giving
+Bindle time to greet Charley.
+
+"'Ere," cried Bindle, "why----?"
+
+"Never mind, Uncle Joe, Charley's going to mend the musical-box."
+
+"But wot about it--'im," Bindle corrected himself, indicating the
+kitchen with a jerk of his thumb.
+
+"Charley's-going-to-mend-the-musical-box," she repeated with great
+distinctness. And again Bindle marvelled at the grown-upness of her.
+
+He looked across at his nephew, a puzzled expression creasing his
+forehead.
+
+"Better do as she says, Uncle Joe," laughed Charley. "It saves time."
+
+"But----" began Bindle.
+
+"There it is, Charley," cried Millie, indicating a mahogany object,
+with glass top and sides that gave an indelicate view of its internal
+organism. Being a dutiful husband, Charley lifted down the box and
+placed it on to the table.
+
+"For Gawd's sake be careful of Ole Dumb Abraham," cried Bindle. "If----"
+
+"Of who?" cried Millie, her pretty brows puckered.
+
+Bindle explained, watching with anxious eyes as Charley lifted the
+treasure from the small table on which it habitually rested, and placed
+it upon the centre table, where Millie had cleared a space.
+
+Charley's apparent unconcern gave Bindle an unpleasant feeling at the
+base of his spine. He had been disciplined to regard the parlour as holy
+ground, and the musical-box as the holiest thing it contained.
+
+For the next three-quarters of an hour Bindle and Millie watched
+Charley, as, with deft fingers, he took the affair to pieces and put it
+together again.
+
+Finally, with much coaxing and a little oil, he got it to give forth an
+anaemic interpretation of "The Keel Row." Then it gurgled, slowed down
+and gave up the struggle, in consequence of which Charley made further
+incursions into its interior.
+
+Becoming accustomed to the thought of Aunt Anne's legacy being subjected
+to the profanation of screw-driver and oil-bottle, Bindle sat down by
+the window, and proceeded to exchange confidences with Millie, who had
+made it clear to him that her aunt and son were to be left to their
+tete-a-tete undisturbed.
+
+The conversation between uncle and niece was punctuated by snatches from
+"The Keel Row," as Charley was successful in getting the sluggish
+mechanism of Dumb Abraham into temporary motion.
+
+Occasionally he would give expression to a hiss or murmur of impatience,
+and Millie would smile across at him an intimate little smile of
+sympathy.
+
+Suddenly, gaunt tragedy stalked into the room.
+
+Crash!
+
+"My Gawd!"
+
+"Oh, Charley!"
+
+"Damn!"
+
+And Poor Aunt Anne's musical-box lay on the floor, a ruin of splintered
+glass.
+
+Charley Dixon sucked a damaged thumb, Millie clung to his arm,
+solicitous and enquiring, whilst Bindle gazed down at the broken mass,
+fear in his eyes, and a sense of irretrievable disaster clutching at his
+heart.
+
+Charley began to explain, Millie demanded to see the damaged thumb--but
+Bindle continued to gaze at the sacred relic.
+
+Five minutes later, the trio left the parlour. As noiselessly as
+conspirators they tip-toed along the passage to the kitchen door, which
+stood ajar.
+
+Through the aperture Mrs. Bindle could be seen seated at the table,
+Joseph the Second reposing in the crook of her left arm, whilst she,
+with her right hand, was endeavouring to work the monkey-on-a-stick.
+
+In her eyes was a strange softness, a smile broke the hard lines of her
+mouth, whilst from her lips came an incessant flow of baby language.
+
+For several minutes they watched. They saw Mrs. Bindle lay aside the
+monkey-on-a-stick, and bend over the babe, murmuring the sounds that
+come by instinct to every woman's lips.
+
+At a sign from Millie, they entered. Mrs. Bindle glanced over her
+shoulder in their direction; but other and weightier matters claimed her
+attention.
+
+"Lizzie," began Bindle, who had stipulated that he should break the
+awful news, urging as his reason that it had to be done with "tack." He
+paused. Mrs. Bindle took no notice; but continued to bend over Little
+Joe, making strange sounds.
+
+"Lizzie----" he began, paused, then in a rush the words came. "We broken
+the musical-box."
+
+He stopped, that the heavens might have an opportunity of falling.
+
+"Did-he-love-his-Auntie-Lizzie-blossom-um-um-um-um."
+
+Charley and Millie exchanged glances; but Bindle was too intent upon his
+disastrous mission to be conscious of anything but the storm he knew was
+about to break.
+
+"Did you 'ear, Lizzie," he continued. "We broken the musical-box.
+Smashed it all to smithereens. Done for it," he added, as if to leave no
+loophole for misconception as to the appalling nature of the tragedy.
+
+He held his breath, as one who has just tugged at the cord of a
+shower-bath.
+
+"Oh! go away do!" she cried. "Um-um-um-um-prettyums."
+
+"Pore Aunt Anne's musical-box," he repeated dully. "It's smashed."
+
+"Oh, bother the musical-box! Um-um-um-per-weshus-um-um-um."
+
+Mrs. Bindle had not even looked up.
+
+It was Millie who shepherded the others back into the parlour, where
+Bindle mopped his brow, with the air of a man who, having met death face
+to face, has survived.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" was all he said.
+
+And Millie smiled across at Charley, a smile of superior understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE
+
+
+"I wonder you allow that girl to wear such disgusting clothes."
+
+For the last five minutes Mrs. Bindle had been watching Alice, Mrs.
+Hearty's maid, as she moved about the room, tidying-up. The girl had
+just returned from her evening out, and her first act had been to bring
+Mrs. Hearty her nightly glass of Guinness and "snack of
+bread-and-cheese," an enormous crust torn from a new cottage loaf and
+plentifully spread with butter, flanked by about a quarter-of-a-pound of
+cheese. Now that the girl had left the room, Mrs. Bindle could contain
+herself no longer.
+
+Mrs. Hearty was a woman upon whom fat had descended as a disguise. Her
+manifold chins rippled downwards until they became absorbed in the
+gigantic wave of her bust. She had a generous appetite, and was damned
+with a liking for fat-forming foods.
+
+With her sister she had nothing in common; but in Bindle she had found a
+kindred spirit. The very sight of him would invariably set her heaving
+and pulsating with laughter and protestations of "Oh, Joe, don't!"
+
+For response to her sister's comment, Mrs. Hearty took a deep draught
+of Guinness and then, with a film of froth still upon her upper lip, she
+retorted, "It's 'er night out," and relapsed into wheezes and endeavours
+to regain her breath.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was not in a good humour. She had called hoping to find Mr.
+Hearty returned from choir-practice, after which was to be announced the
+deacons' decision as to who was to succeed Mr. Smithers in training the
+choir.
+
+Her brother-in-law's success was with her something between an
+inspiration and a hobby. It became the absorbing interest in life,
+outside the chapel and her home. No wife, or mother, ever watched the
+progress of a husband, or son, with keener interest, or greater
+admiration, than Mrs. Bindle that of Mr. Hearty.
+
+As a girl, she had been pleasure-loving. There were those who even went
+to the extent of regarding her as flighty. She attended theatres and
+music-halls, which she had not then regarded as "places of sin," and her
+contemporaries classified her as something of a flirt; but
+disillusionment had come with marriage. She soon realised that she had
+made the great and unforgivable mistake of marrying the wrong man. It
+turned her from the "carnal," and was the cause of her joining the Alton
+Road Chapel, at which Mr. Hearty worshipped.
+
+From that date she began a careful and elaborate preparation for the
+next world.
+
+Although she nightly sought the Almighty to forgive her her trespasses,
+volunteering the information that she in turn would forgive those who
+trespassed against her, she never forgave Bindle for his glib and ready
+tongue, which had obscured her judgment to the extent of allowing to
+escape from the matrimonial noose, a potential master-greengrocer with
+three shops.
+
+There was nothing in her attitude towards Mr. Hearty suggestive of
+sentiment. She was a woman, and she bowed the knee at an altar where
+women love to worship.
+
+"I call it----" Mrs. Bindle stopped short as Alice re-entered the room
+with a small dish of pickled onions, without which Mrs. Hearty would
+have found it impossible to sleep.
+
+With a woman's instinct, Alice realised that Mrs. Bindle disapproved of
+her low-cut, pale blue blouse, and the short skirt that exposed to the
+world's gaze so much of the nether Alice.
+
+"You ain't been lonely, mum?" she queried solicitously, as she took a
+final look round before going to bed, to see that everything was in
+order.
+
+Mrs. Hearty shook her head and undulated violently.
+
+"It's my breath," she panted, and proceeded to hit her chest with the
+flat of her doubled-up fist. "'Ad a nice time?" she managed to gasp in
+the tone of a mistress who knows and understands, and is known and
+understood by, her maid.
+
+"Oh! it was lovely," cried Alice ecstatically. "I went to the pictures
+with"--she hesitated and blushed--"a friend," then, pride getting the
+better of self-consciousness, she added, "a gentleman friend, mum.
+There was a filum about a young girl running away with 'er boy on a
+horse who turned out to be a millionaire and she looked lovely in her
+veil and orange-blossom and 'im that 'andsome."
+
+"And when's it to be, Alice?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, between the assaults
+upon her chest.
+
+"Oh, mum!" giggled Alice, and a moment later she had disappeared round
+the door, with a "Good night, mum, mind you sleeps well."
+
+"I'm surprised the way you let that girl talk to you, Martha," snapped
+Mrs. Bindle, almost before the door had closed behind the retreating
+Alice. "You allow her to be too familiar. If you give them an inch,
+they'll take an ell," she added.
+
+"She's a good gal," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she lifted the glass of
+Guinness to her lips. "It's gone orf," she added a moment later. "It
+ain't wot it used to be," and she shook a despondent head as she
+replaced the almost empty glass upon the table.
+
+"You'd be better without it," was the unsympathetic rejoinder, then, not
+to be diverted from the topic of Alice and her scanty attire, Mrs.
+Bindle added, "Her blouse was disgusting, and as for her skirt, I should
+be ashamed for her to be seen entering my house."
+
+Mrs. Bindle believed in appearances as she believed in "the Lord," and
+it is open to question, if the two had at any time clashed, whether
+appearances would have been sacrificed.
+
+"She's all right," wheezed Mrs. Hearty comfortably, through a mouthful
+of bread-and-cheese.
+
+"The way girls dress now makes me hot all over," snapped Mrs. Bindle.
+"The police ought to stop it."
+
+"They,"--with a gigantic swallow Mrs. Hearty reduced the
+bread-and-cheese to conversational proportions,--"they like it," she
+gasped at length, and broke into ripples and wheezes.
+
+"Don't be disgusting, Martha. You make me ashamed. You ought to speak to
+Alice. It's not respectable, her going about like that."
+
+Mrs. Hearty made an effort to speak; but the words failed to penetrate
+the barrage of bread-and-cheese--Mrs. Hearty did everything with gusto.
+
+"Supposing I was to go out in a short skirt like that. What would you
+say then?"
+
+"You--you ain't got the legs, Lizzie," and Mrs. Hearty was off into a
+paroxysm of gasps and undulations.
+
+"Oh don't, don't," she gasped, as if Mrs. Bindle were responsible for
+her agony. "You'll be the death of me," she cried, as she wiped her eyes
+with a soiled pocket-handkerchief.
+
+To Mrs. Hearty, laughter came as an impulse and an agony. She would
+implore the world at large not to make her laugh, heaving and shaking as
+she protested. She was good-natured, easy-going, and popular with her
+friends, who marvelled at what it was she had seen in the sedate and
+decorous Mr. Hearty to prompt her to marry him.
+
+During her sister's paroxysm, Mrs. Bindle preserved a dignified
+silence. She always deplored Mrs. Hearty's lack of self-control.
+
+"There are the neighbours to consider," she continued at length. Mrs.
+Bindle's thoughts were always with her brother-in-law. "Look how low her
+blouse was."
+
+"It's 'ealthy," puffed Mrs. Hearty, who could always be depended upon to
+find excuses for a black sheep's blackness.
+
+"I call it disgusting." Mrs. Bindle's mouth shut with a snap.
+
+"You----" Mrs. Hearty's reply was stifled in a sudden fit of coughing.
+She heaved and struggled for breath, while her face took on a deep
+purple hue.
+
+Mrs. Bindle rose and proceeded to bestow a series of resounding smacks
+with the flat of her hand upon Mrs. Hearty's ample back. There was a
+heartiness in the blows that savoured of the Old rather than the New
+Testament.
+
+Nearly five minutes elapsed before Mrs. Hearty was sufficiently
+recovered to explain that a crumb had gone the wrong way.
+
+"Serves you right for encouraging that girl in her wickedness," was Mrs.
+Bindle's unsympathetic comment as she returned to her chair. Vaguely she
+saw in her sister's paroxysm, the rebuke of a frowning Providence.
+
+"You wasn't always like wot you are now," complained Mrs. Hearty at
+length.
+
+"I never dressed anything like that girl." There was a note of
+fierceness in Mrs. Bindle's voice, "and I defy you to say I did, Martha
+Hearty, so there."
+
+"Didn't I 'ave to speak to you once about your stockings?" Mrs. Hearty's
+recent attack seemed to have rendered speech easier.
+
+"No wonder you choke," snapped Mrs. Bindle angrily, "saying things like
+that."
+
+"Didn't the boys shout after you 'yaller legs'?" she gasped, determined
+to get the full flavour out of the incident. "They wasn't worn coloured
+then."
+
+"I wonder you aren't afraid of being struck dead," cried Mrs. Bindle
+furiously.
+
+"And you goin' out in muslin and a thin petticoat, and yer legs showin'
+through and the lace on----"
+
+"Don't you dare----" Mrs. Bindle stopped, her utterance strangled. Her
+face was scarlet, and in her eyes was murder. She was conscious that her
+past was a past of vanity; but those were days she had put behind her,
+days when she would spend every penny she could scrape together upon her
+person.
+
+But Mrs. Hearty was oblivious to the storm of anger that her words had
+aroused in her sister's heart. The recollection of the yellow stockings
+and the transparent muslin frock was too much for her, and she was off
+into splutters and wheezes of mirth, among which an occasional "Oh
+don't!" was distinguishable.
+
+"I don't know what's coming to girls, I'm sure," cried Mrs. Bindle at
+length. She had to some extent regained her composure, and was desirous
+of turning the conversation from herself. She lived in fear of her
+sister's frankness; Mrs. Hearty never censored a wardrobe before
+speaking of it.
+
+"They're a lot of brazen hussies," continued Mrs. Bindle, "displaying
+themselves like they do. I can't think why they do it."
+
+"Men!" grunted Mrs. Hearty.
+
+"Don't be disgusting, Martha."
+
+"You always was a fool, Lizzie," said Mrs. Hearty good-humouredly.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was determined not to allow the subject of Alice's
+indelicate display of her person to escape her. She had merely been
+waiting her opportunity to return to the charge.
+
+"You should think of Mr. Hearty," she said unctuously; "he's got a
+position to keep up, and people will talk, seeing that girl going out
+like that."
+
+At this, Mrs. Hearty once more became helpless with suppressed laughter.
+Her manifold chins vibrated, tears streamed down her cheeks, and she
+wheezed and gasped and struck her chest, fierce, resounding blows.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she gasped at length. "You'll be the death of me, Lizzie,"
+and then another wave of laughter assailed her, and she was off again.
+
+Presently, as the result of an obvious effort, she spluttered, "'E likes
+it, too," she ended in a little scream of laughter. "You watch him. Oh,
+oh, I shall die!" she gasped.
+
+"Martha, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she cried angrily.
+"You're as bad as Bindle."
+
+For fully a minute, Mrs. Hearty rocked and heaved, as she strove to
+find utterance for something that seemed to be stifling her.
+
+"You don't know Alf!" she gasped at length, as she mopped her face with
+the dingy pocket-handkerchief. "Alice gives notice," she managed to
+gasp. "Alf tries to kiss----" and speech once more forsook her.
+
+The look in Mrs. Bindle's eyes was that she usually kept for
+blasphemers. Mr. Hearty was the god of her idolatry, impeccable, austere
+and unimpeachable. The mere suggestion that he should behave in a way
+she would not expect even Bindle to behave, filled her with loathing,
+and she determined that her sister would eventually share the fate of
+Sapphira.
+
+"Martha, you're a disgrace," she cried, rising. "You might at least have
+the decency not to drag Mr. Hearty's name into your unclean
+conversation. I think you owe him an apology for----"
+
+At that moment the door opened, and Mr. Hearty entered.
+
+"Didn't you, Alf?" demanded Mrs. Hearty.
+
+"Didn't I what, Martha?" asked Mr. Hearty in a thin, woolly voice. "Good
+evening, Elizabeth," he added, turning to Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Didn't you try to kiss Alice, and she slapped your face?" Mrs. Hearty
+once more proceeded to mop her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. The
+comedy was good; but it was painful.
+
+For one fleeting moment Mr. Hearty was unmasked. His whole expression
+underwent a change. There was fear in his eyes. He looked about him like
+a hunted animal seeking escape. Then, by a great effort, he seemed to
+re-assert control over himself.
+
+"I--I've forgotten to post a letter," he muttered, and a second later
+the door closed behind him.
+
+"'E's always like that when I remind him," cried Mrs. Hearty, "always
+forgotten to post a letter."
+
+"Martha," said Mrs. Bindle solemnly, as she resumed her seat, "you're a
+wicked woman, and to-night I shall ask God to forgive you."
+
+"Make it Alf instead," cried Mrs. Hearty.
+
+Five minutes later, Mr. Hearty re-entered the parlour, looking furtively
+from his wife to Mrs. Bindle. He was a spare man of medium height, with
+an iron-grey moustache and what Bindle described as "'alleluia
+whiskers"; but which the world knows as mutton-chops. He was a man to
+whom all violence, be it physical or verbal, was distasteful. He
+preferred diplomacy to the sword.
+
+"Oo's got it, Alf?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, suddenly remembering the
+chapel choir and her husband's aspirations.
+
+"Mr. Coplestone." The natural woolliness of Mr. Hearty's voice was
+emphasised by the dejection of disappointment; but his eyes told of the
+relief he felt that Alice was no longer to be the topic of conversation.
+
+"It's a shame, Mr. Hearty, that it is."
+
+Mrs. Bindle folded her hands in her lap and drew in her chin, with the
+air of one who scents a great injustice. The injustice of the
+appointment quite blotted-out from her mind all thought of Alice.
+
+"You got quite enough to do, Alf," wheezed Mrs. Hearty as, after many
+ineffectual bounces, she struggled to her feet, and stood swaying
+slightly as she beat her breast reproachfully.
+
+"I could have found time," said Mr. Hearty, as he picked nervously at
+the quicks of his finger-nails.
+
+"Of course you could," agreed Mrs. Bindle, looking up at her sister
+disapprovingly.
+
+"I've never once missed a choir-practice," he continued, with the air of
+a man who is advancing a definite claim.
+
+"Trust you," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she rolled towards the door. "It's
+them gals," she added. "Good-night, Lizzie. Don't be long, Alf. You
+always wake me getting into bed," and, with a final wheeze, she passed
+out of the room.
+
+Mr. Hearty coughed nervously behind his hand; whilst Mrs. Bindle drew in
+her lips and chin still further. The indelicacy of Mrs. Hearty's remark
+embarrassed them both.
+
+It had always been Mr. Hearty's wish to train the choir at the Alton
+Road Chapel, and when Mr. Smithers had resigned, owing to chronic
+bronchitis and the approach of winter, Mr. Hearty felt that the time had
+come when yet another of his ambitions was to be realised. There had
+proved, however, to be another Richmond in the field, in the shape of
+Mr. Coplestone, who kept an oil-shop in the New King's Road.
+
+By some means unknown to Mr. Hearty, his rival had managed to invest the
+interest of the minister and several of the deacons, with the result
+that Mr. Hearty had come out a very bad second.
+
+Now, in the hour of defeat, he yearned for sympathy, and there was only
+one to whom he could turn, his sister-in-law, who shared so many of his
+earthly views and heavenly hopes. Would his sister-in-law believe----
+
+"I call it a shame," she said for the second time, as Mr. Hearty drew a
+deep sigh of relief. In spite of herself, Mrs. Bindle was irritated at
+the way in which he picked at the quicks of his finger-nails, "and you
+so musical, too," she added.
+
+"I have always been interested in music," said Mr. Hearty, with the air
+of one who knows that he is receiving nothing but his due. Alice and her
+alluring clothing were forgotten. "I had learned the Tonic Sol-fa
+notation by heart before I was twenty," he added.
+
+"You would have done so much to improve the singing." Mrs. Bindle was
+intent only on applying balm to her hero's wounds. She too had forgotten
+Alice and all her ways.
+
+"It isn't what it might be," he remarked. "It has been very indifferent
+lately. Several have noticed it. Last Sunday, they nearly broke down in
+'The Half Was Never Told.'"
+
+Mrs. Bindle nodded.
+
+"They always find it difficult to get high 'f'," he continued. "I should
+have made a point of cultivating their upper registers," he added, with
+the melancholy retrospection of a man who, after a fire, states that it
+had been his intention to insure on the morrow.
+
+"Perhaps----" began Mrs. Bindle, then she stopped. It seemed unchristian
+to say that perhaps Mr. Coplestone would have to relinquish his newly
+acquired honour.
+
+"I should also have tried to have the American organ tuned, I don't
+think the bellows is very sound, either."
+
+For some minutes there was silence. Mr. Hearty was preoccupied with the
+quicks of his finger-nails. He had just succeeded in drawing blood, and
+he glanced covertly at Mrs. Bindle to see if she had noticed it.
+
+"Er----" he paused. He had been seeking an opportunity of clearing his
+character with his sister-in-law. Suddenly inspiration gripped him.
+
+"I--we----" he paused. "I'm afraid Martha will have to get rid of
+Alice."
+
+"And about time, with clothes like she wears," was Mrs. Bindle's
+uncompromising comment.
+
+"And she tells--she's most untruthful," he continued eagerly; he was
+smarting under the recollection that Alice had on one occasion pushed
+aside the half-crown he had tendered, and it had required a ten shilling
+note to remove from her memory the thought of her "friend" with whom she
+had threatened him.
+
+"I've been speaking about her to Martha this evening." The line of Mrs.
+Bindle's lips was still grim.
+
+"I'm afraid she's a bad--not a good girl," amended Mr. Hearty. "I----"
+
+"You don't push yourself forward enough," said Mrs. Bindle, her thoughts
+still on Mr. Coplestone's victory. "Look at Bindle. He knows a lord,
+and look what he is." She precipitated into the last two words all the
+venom of years of disappointment. "And you've got three shops," she
+added inconsequently.
+
+"I--I never had time to go out and about," stuttered Mr. Hearty, as if
+that explained the fact of his not possessing a lord among his
+acquaintance. His thoughts were still preoccupied with the Alice
+episode.
+
+"You ought to, Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle with conviction. "You owe
+it to yourself and to what you've done."
+
+"You see, Joseph is different," said Mr. Hearty, pursuing his own line
+of thought. "He----"
+
+"Talks too much," said Mrs. Bindle with decision, filling in the blank
+inaccurately. "I tell him his fine friends only laugh up their sleeves
+at him. They should see him in his own home," she added.
+
+For some moments there was silence, during which Mrs. Bindle sat,
+immobile as an Assyrian goddess, her eyes smouldering balefully.
+
+"I should have liked to have trained the choir," he said, his mind
+returning to the cause of his disappointment.
+
+"It's that Mr. Coplestone," said Mrs. Bindle with conviction. "I never
+liked him, with his foxy little ways. I never deal with him."
+
+"I have always done what I could for the chapel, too," continued Mr.
+Hearty, not to be diverted from his main theme by reference to Mr.
+Coplestone's shortcomings.
+
+"You've done too much, Mr. Hearty, that's what's the matter," she cried
+with conviction, loyalty to her brother-in-law triumphing over all sense
+of Christian charity. "It's always the same. Look at Bindle," she added,
+unable to forget entirely her own domestic cross. "Think what I've done
+for him, and look at him."
+
+"Last year I let them have all the fruit at cost price for the
+choir-outing," said Mr. Hearty; "but I'll never do it again," he added,
+the man in him triumphing over the martyr, "and I picked it all out
+myself."
+
+"The more you do, the more you may do," said Mrs. Bindle oracularly.
+
+Mr. Hearty's reference was to a custom prevailing among the worshippers
+at the Alton Road Chapel. It was an understood thing that, in placing
+orders, preference should always be given to members of the flock, who,
+on their part, undertook to supply their respective commodities at cost
+price. The object of this was to bring all festivities "within reach of
+our poorer brethren," as Mr. Sopley, a one-time minister, had expressed
+it when advocating the principle.
+
+The result was hours of heart-searching for those entrusted with the
+feeding of the Faithful. Mr. Hearty, for instance, spent much time and
+thought in wrestling with figures and his conscience. He argued that
+"cost price" must allow for rent, rates and taxes; salaries, a knowledge
+of the cheapest markets (which he possessed) and interest on capital
+(his own).
+
+By a curious coincidence, the actual figures came out very little above
+the ordinary retail price he was charging in his shops, which proved to
+him conclusively that he was in no sense of the term a profiteer. As a
+matter of fact, it showed that he was under-charging.
+
+Other members of the chapel seemed to arrive at practically the same
+result as Mr. Hearty, and by similar means.
+
+As the "poorer brethren" had no voice in the fixing of these prices, and
+as everyone was too interested in his own figures to think of
+criticising those of others, the "poorer brethren" either paid, or
+stayed away.
+
+"You ought to join the choir, Elizabeth." It was Mr. Hearty's
+thank-offering for sympathy.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hearty!" she simpered. "I'm sure I couldn't sing well enough."
+
+"You sing very nicely, Elizabeth. I have noticed it on Sunday evenings
+when you come round. You have a very good high soprano."
+
+A quiver passed through Mrs. Bindle. She drew herself up, and her lips
+seemed to take on a softer line.
+
+"I'm sure it's very good of you to say so," she responded gratefully.
+
+"I shall still sing in the choir," said Mr. Hearty; "but----"
+
+A heavy pounding overhead caused him to start violently. It was Mrs.
+Hearty's curfew.
+
+Mrs. Bindle rose and Mr. Hearty accompanied her to the street-door.
+Alice was in the passage, apparently on her way to bed.
+
+"Good night, Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Good night, Elizabeth," and Mr. Hearty closed the door behind her.
+
+She paused to open her umbrella, it was spotting with rain and Mrs.
+Bindle was careful of her clothes.
+
+Suddenly through the open transom she heard a surprised scream and the
+sound of scuffling.
+
+"You beast," cried a feminine voice. "I'll tell missis, that I will."
+
+And Mrs. Bindle turned and ran full-tilt into a policeman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME
+
+
+I
+
+"Gospel bells, gospel bells, hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm."
+
+Mrs. Bindle accompanied her favourite hymn with bangs from the flat-iron
+as she strove to coax one of Bindle's shirts to smoothness.
+
+She invariably worked to the tune of "Gospel Bells." Of the hymn itself
+she possessed two words, "gospel" and "bells"; but the tune was hers to
+the most insignificant semi-quaver, and an unlimited supply of "hms" did
+the rest.
+
+Turning the shirt at the word "gospel," she brought the iron down full
+in the middle of what, judging from the power she put into the stroke,
+might have been Bindle's back.
+
+"Bells," she sang with emphasis, and proceeded to trail off into the
+"hms."
+
+With Mrs. Bindle, singing reflected her mood. When indignation or anger
+gripped her soul, "Gospel Bells" was rendered with a vigour that
+penetrated to Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney.
+
+Then, as her mood mellowed, so would the tune soften, almost dying away
+until, possibly, a stray thought of Bindle brought about a crescendo
+passage, capable of being developed into full forte, brass-wind and
+tympani.
+
+After one of these full-throated passages, the thought of her
+brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, mellowed the stream of melody passing
+through her thin, slightly parted lips.
+
+It had reached an almost caressing softness, when a knock at the door
+caused her to stop suddenly. A moment later, the iron was banged upon
+the rest, and she glanced down at her apron. To use her own phrase, she
+was the "pink of neatness."
+
+Walking across the kitchen and along the short passage, she threw open
+the door with the air of one who was prepared to defend the sacred
+domestic hearth against all comers.
+
+"I've come about the 'ouse, mum." A mild-looking little man with a dirty
+collar and a deprecating manner stood before her, sucking nervously at a
+hollow tooth, the squeak of which his friends had learned to live down.
+
+"The house!" repeated Mrs. Bindle aggressively. "What house?"
+
+"This 'ouse wot's to let, mum." The little man struggled to extract a
+newspaper from his pocket. "I'd like to take it," he added.
+
+"Oh! you would, would you?" Mrs. Bindle eyed him with disfavour. "Well,
+it's not to let," and with that she banged the door in the little man's
+face, just as his pocket gave up the struggle and released a soiled
+copy of _The Fulham Signal_.
+
+He started back, the paper falling upon the tiled-path that led from the
+gate to the front-door.
+
+For nearly a minute he stood staring at the door, as if not quite
+realising what had happened. Then, picking up the paper, he gazed at it
+with a puzzled expression, turned to a marked passage under the heading
+"Houses to Let," and read:
+
+     HOUSE TO LET.--Four-roomed house to let in Fulham. Easy access to
+     bus, tram and train. Rent 15/6 a week. Immediate possession. Apply
+     to occupier, 7 Fenton Street, Fulham, S.W.
+
+He looked at the number on the door, back again at the paper, then once
+more at the number. Apparently satisfied that there was no mistake, he
+knocked again, a feeble, half-hearted knock that testified to the
+tremors within him.
+
+He had been graded C3; but he possessed a wife who was, physically, A1.
+It was the knowledge that she would demand an explanation if he failed
+to secure the house, after which she had sent him hot-foot, that
+inspired him with sufficient courage to make a second attempt to
+interview Mrs. Bindle.
+
+With inward tremblings, he waited for the door to open again. As he
+stood, hoping against hope in his coward heart that the summons had not
+been heard, a big, heavily-hipped woman, in a dirty black-and-white
+foulard blouse, a draggled green skirt, and shapeless stays, slid
+through the gate and waddled up the path.
+
+"So you got 'ere fust," she gasped, her flushed face showing that she
+had been hurrying. "Well, well, it can't be 'elped, I suppose, fust come
+fust served. I always says it and always shall."
+
+The little man had swung round, and now stood blinking up at the new
+arrival, who entirely blocked his line of retreat.
+
+"Knocked, 'ave you?" she enquired, fanning her flushed face with a
+folded newspaper.
+
+He nodded; but his gaze was directed over her heaving shoulder at a man
+and woman, with a little girl between them, approaching from the
+opposite side of the way.
+
+As the new arrivals entered the garden, the stout woman explained that
+"this gentleman" had already knocked.
+
+"P'raps they ain't up yet," suggested the man with the little girl.
+
+"Well, they ought to be," said the stout woman with conviction.
+
+Another woman now joined the throng, her turned-up sleeves and the man's
+tweed cap on her head, kept in place by a long, amber-headed hat-pin,
+testifying to the limited time she had bestowed upon her toilette.
+
+"Is it took?" she demanded of the woman with the little girl.
+
+"Dunno!" was the reply. "She ain't opened the door yet."
+
+"She opened it once," said the little man.
+
+"Wot she say?"
+
+"Said it wasn't to let, then banged it to in my face," was the injured
+response.
+
+"'Ere, let me 'ave a try," cried the woman in the foulard blouse, as she
+grasped the knocker and proceeded to awaken the echoes of Fenton Street.
+Corple Street at one end and Bransdon Road at the other, were included
+in the sound-waves that emanated from the Bindles' knocker.
+
+Several neighbours, including Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney, came to their
+doors and gazed at the collection of people that now entirely blocked
+the pathway of No. 7. Three other women had joined the throng, together
+with a rag-and-bone man in dilapidated clothing, accompanied by a donkey
+and cart.
+
+"A shame I calls it, a-keepin' folks 'angin' about like this," said one
+of the new arrivals.
+
+"P'raps it's let," said the rag-and-bone man.
+
+"Well, why don't they say so?" snapped she with the tweed cap and
+hat-pin.
+
+"'Ave another go, missis," suggested the man with the little girl. "I'm
+losin' 'alf a day over this."
+
+Inspired by this advice, the big woman reached forward to seize the
+knocker. At that moment the door was wrenched open, and Mrs. Bindle
+appeared. She had removed her apron and brushed her thin, sandy hair,
+which was drawn back from her sharp, hatchet-like face so that not a
+hair wantoned from the restraining influence of the knot behind.
+
+Grim, with indrawn lips and the light of battle in her eyes she glared,
+first at the little man with whom she had already held parley, then at
+the woman in the foulard blouse.
+
+At chapel, there was no more meek and docile "Daughter of the Lord" than
+Mrs. Bindle. To her, religion was an ever-ready help and sustenance; but
+there was something in her life that bulked even larger than her Faith,
+although she would have been the first to deny it. That thing was her
+Home.
+
+In keeping the domestic temple of her hearth as she conceived it should
+be kept, Mrs. Bindle toiled ceaselessly. It was her fetish. She
+worshipped at chapel as a stepping-stone to post-mortem glory; but her
+home was the real altar at which she sacrificed.
+
+As she gazed at the "rabble," as she mentally characterised it,
+littering the tiled-path of the front garden, which only that morning
+she had cleaned, the rage of David entered her heart; but she was a
+God-fearing woman who disliked violence--until it was absolutely
+necessary.
+
+"Was it you knocking?" she demanded of the big woman in the foulard
+blouse. Her voice was sharp as the edge of a razor; but restrained.
+
+"That's right, my dear," replied the woman comfortably, "I come about
+the 'ouse."
+
+"Oh! you have, have you?" cried Mrs. Bindle. "And are these your
+friends?" Her eyes for a moment left those of her antagonist and took in
+the queue which, by now, overflowed the path into the roadway.
+
+"Look 'ere, I'll give you sixteen bob a week," broke in the woman with
+the tweed cap and the hat-pin, instantly rendering herself an Ishmael.
+
+"'Ere, none o' that!" cried an angry female voice. "Fair do's."
+
+There was a murmur of approval from the others, which was interrupted by
+Mrs. Bindle's clear-cut, incisive voice.
+
+"Get out of my garden, and be off, the lot of you," she cried, taking a
+half-step in the direction of the big woman, to whom she addressed
+herself.
+
+"Is it let?" enquired the rag-and-bone man from the rear.
+
+"Is what let?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"The 'ouse, mum," said the rag-and-bone man, whose profession demanded
+tact and politeness.
+
+"This house is not to let," was the angry retort, "never was to let, and
+never will be to let till I'm gone. Now you just be off with you,
+or----" she paused.
+
+"Or wot?" demanded she of the tweed cap and hat-pin, desirous of
+rehabilitating herself with the others.
+
+"I'll send for a policeman," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder. She still
+restrained her natural instincts in a vice-like self-control. Her hands
+shook slightly; but not with fear. It was the trembling of the tigress
+preparing to spring.
+
+"Then wot about this advert?" cried the man with the little girl,
+extending the newspaper towards her.
+
+"Yes, wot about it?" demanded the woman in the foulard blouse, extending
+her paper in turn.
+
+"There's no advertisement about this house," said Mrs. Bindle, ignoring
+the papers, "and you'd better go away. Pity you haven't got something
+better to do than to come disturbin' me in the midst of my ironin'," and
+with that she banged the door and disappeared.
+
+A murmur of anger passed along the queue, anger which portended trouble.
+
+"Nice way to treat people," said a little woman with a dirty face, a
+dingy black bonnet and a velvet dolman, to which portions of the
+original jet-trimming still despairingly adhered. "Some folks don't seem
+to know 'ow to be'ave."
+
+There was another murmur of agreement.
+
+"Kick the blinkin' door in," suggested a pacifist.
+
+"I'd like to get at 'er with my nails," said a sharp-faced woman with a
+baby in her arms. "I know '_er_ sort."
+
+"Deserves to 'ave 'er stutterin' windows smashed, the stuck-up baggage!"
+cried another.
+
+"'Ullo, look at all them people."
+
+A big, puffy man with a person that rendered his boots invisible, guided
+the hand-cart he was pushing into the kerb in front of No. 7 Fenton
+Street. A pale, dispirited lad was harnessed to the vehicle by a
+dilapidated piece of much-knotted rope strung across his narrow chest.
+As the barrow came to a standstill, he allowed the rope to drop to the
+ground and, stepping out of the harness, he turned an apathetic and
+unspeculative eye towards the crowd.
+
+The big man, whose clothing consisted of a shirt, a pair of trousers
+and some braces, stood looking at the applicants for the altar of Mrs.
+Bindle's life. The crowd returned the stare with interest. The furniture
+piled upon the barrow caused them some anxiety. Was that the explanation
+of the unfriendly reception accorded them?
+
+"Now then, Charley, when you've done a-drinkin' in this bloomin'
+beauty-show, you can give me a 'and."
+
+"'Oo are you calling a beauty-show?" demanded the woman in the dolman.
+"You ain't got much to talk about, with a stummick like yours."
+
+"My mistake, missis," said the big man imperturbably. "Sorry I made you
+cry." Then, turning to Charley, he added: "If you 'adn't such a thick
+'ead, Charley, you'd know it was a sugar queue. They're wearin' too much
+for a beauty-show. Now, then, over the top, my lad." He indicated the
+railings with a nod, the gateway was blocked.
+
+With the leisurely movements of a fatalist, Charley moved his
+inconspicuous person towards the railings of No. 7, while the big man
+proceeded to untie the rope that bound a miscellaneous collection of
+household goods to the hand-cart, an operation which entirely absorbed
+the attention of the queue.
+
+"You took it?" interrogated the rag-and-bone man.
+
+"Don't you worry, cocky," said the big man as he lifted from the barrow
+a cane-bottomed chair, through which somebody had evidently sat, and
+placed it on the pavement. "Once inside the garding and the 'ouse is
+mine. 'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he admonished the lad, who was
+standing by the kerb as if reluctant to trespass.
+
+With unexpressive face, the boy turned and climbed the railings.
+
+"Catch 'old," cried the man, thrusting into Charley's unwilling hands a
+dilapidated saucepan.
+
+The boy tossed it on to the small flower-bed in the centre of the
+garden, where Mrs. Bindle was endeavouring to cultivate geraniums from
+slips supplied by a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel. These
+geranium slips were the stars in the grey firmament of her life. She
+tended them assiduously, and always kept a jug of water just inside the
+parlour-window with which to discourage investigating cats. It was she
+too that had planted the lobelia-border.
+
+The queue seemed hypnotised by the overwhelming personality of the big
+man. With the fatalism of despair they decided that the gods were
+against them, and that he really had achieved the success he claimed.
+They still lingered, as if instinct told them that dramatic moments were
+pending.
+
+"I don't doubt but wot I'll be very comfortable," remarked the big man
+contentedly. "'Ere, catch 'old, Charley," he cried, tossing the lad a
+colander, possessed of more holes than the manufacturer had ever dreamed
+of.
+
+Charley turned too late, and the colander caught a geranium which, alone
+among its fellows, had shown a half-hearted tendency to bloom. That
+particular flower was Mrs. Bindle's ewe-lamb.
+
+"Ain't 'e a knock-out?" cried the big man, pausing for a moment to gaze
+at his offspring. "Don't take after 'is pa, and that's a fact," and he
+exposed three or four dark-brown stumps of teeth.
+
+"P'raps you ain't 'is father," giggled a feminine voice at the end of
+the queue.
+
+The big man turned in the direction from which the voice had come,
+stared stolidly at an inoffensive little man, who had "not guilty"
+written all over him, then, deliberately swinging round, he lifted a
+small wicker clothes-basket from the cart.
+
+"'Ere, catch it, Charley," he cried, and without waiting to assure
+himself of Charley's willingness or ability to do so, he pitched it over
+the railings.
+
+Charley turned just in time to see the basket coming. He endeavoured to
+avoid it, tripped over the colander, and sat down in the centre of the
+geranium-bed, carrying riot and desolation with him.
+
+"Ain't you a----" but Charley was never to know how he appeared to his
+father at that moment.
+
+Observing that several heads were turned towards the front door, the
+eyes of the big man had instinctively followed their direction. It was
+what he saw there that had caused him to pause in describing his
+offspring.
+
+Standing very still, her face deathly pale, with no sign of her lips
+beyond a thin, grey line, stood Mrs. Bindle, her eyes fixed upon the
+geranium-bed and the desolation reigning there. Her breath came in short
+jerks.
+
+With an activity of which his previous movements had given no
+indication, Charley climbed the railings to the comparative safety of
+the street.
+
+Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon the big man.
+
+"'Ere, come along, let me get in," he cried, pushing his way through the
+crowd, which showed no inclination for resistance. The little man who
+had first arrived was already well outside, talking to the woman with
+the tweed cap and hat-pin, while she of the foulard blouse was edging
+down the path towards the gate. None showed the least desire to protest
+against the big man's claim to the house by right of conquest--and he
+passed on to his Waterloo.
+
+"I taken this 'ouse," he cried, as he approached the grim figure on the
+doorstep. "Fifteen an' a kick a week, an' cheap at 'alf the price," he
+added jovially.
+
+"'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he called out over his shoulder.
+
+Charley, however, stood gazing at his parent with a greater show of
+interest than he had hitherto manifested. He seemed instinctively to
+grasp the dramatic possibilities of the situation.
+
+"Thought I'd bring the sticks wiv me, missis," said the man genially.
+"Nothink like makin' sure in these days." He stopped suddenly. Without a
+word, Mrs. Bindle had turned and disappeared into the house.
+
+"May as well pay a deposit," he remarked, thrusting a dirty hand into
+his trouser pocket. He glanced over his shoulder and winked jocosely at
+the woman with the foulard blouse.
+
+The next thing he knew was that Drama with a capital "D" had taken a
+hand in the game. The crowd drew its breath with almost a sob of
+surprised expectancy.
+
+Into Charley's vacant eyes there came a look of interest, and into the
+big man's mouth, just as he turned his head, there came a something that
+was wet and tasted odiously of carbolic.
+
+He staggered back, his eyes bulging, as Mrs. Bindle, armed with a large
+mop, which she had taken the precaution to wet, stood regarding him like
+an avenging fury. Her eyes blazed, and her nostrils were distended like
+those of a frightened thoroughbred.
+
+Before the big man had time to splutter his protests, she had swung
+round the mop and brought the handle down with a crack upon his bare,
+bald head. Then, once more swinging round to the business end of the
+mop, she drew back a step and charged.
+
+The mop got the big man just beneath the chin. For a moment he stood on
+one leg, his arms extended, like the figure of Mercury on the Piccadilly
+Circus fountain.
+
+Mrs. Bindle gave another thrust to the mop, and down he went with a
+thud, his head coming with a sharp crack against the tiles of the path.
+
+The crowd murmured its delight. Charley danced from one foot to the
+other, the expression on his face proving conclusively that the vacuous
+look with which he had arrived was merely a mask assumed for defensive
+purposes.
+
+"Get up!"
+
+Into these two words Mrs. Bindle precipitated an amount of feeling that
+thrilled the crowd. The big man, however, lay prone, his eyes fixed in
+fear upon the end of the mop.
+
+"Get up!" repeated Mrs. Bindle. "I'll teach you to come disturbing a
+respectable home. Look at my garden."
+
+As he still made no attempt to move, she turned suddenly and doubled
+along the passage, reappearing a moment later with a pail of water with
+which she had been washing out the scullery. Without a moment's
+hesitation she emptied the contents over the recumbent figure of the big
+man. The house-cloth fell across his eyes, like a bandage, and the
+hearthstone took him full on the nose.
+
+"Oo-er!"
+
+That one act of Mrs. Bindle's had saved from entire annihilation the
+faith of a child. For the first time in his existence, Charley realised
+that there was a God of retribution.
+
+Murmurs of approval came from the crowd.
+
+"Give it to 'im, missis, 'e done it," shouted one. "It warn't the kid's
+fault, blinkin' 'Un."
+
+"Dirty profiteer," cried the thin woman. "Look at 'is stummick," she
+added as if in support of her words.
+
+"Get up!" Again Mrs. Bindle's hard, uninflected words sounded like the
+accents of destiny.
+
+She accompanied her exhortation by a jab from the mop-end of her weapon
+directed at the centre of that portion of the big man's anatomy which
+had been advanced as proof of his profiteering propensities.
+
+He raised himself a few inches; but Mrs. Bindle, with all the
+inconsistency of a woman, dashed the mop once more in his face, and down
+went his head again with a crack.
+
+"Charley!" he roared; but there was nothing of the Paladin about
+Charley. Between him and his father at that moment were eleven years of
+heavy-handed tyranny, and Charley remained on the safety-side of the
+railings.
+
+"Get up! You great, hulkin' brute," cried Mrs. Bindle, reversing the mop
+and getting in a stroke at his solar-plexus which would have made her
+fame in pig-sticking.
+
+"Grrrrumph!" The fat man's exclamation was involuntary.
+
+"Get up, I tell you," she reiterated. "You fat, ugly son of Satan, you
+Beelzebub, you leper, you Judas, you----" she paused a moment in her
+search for the undesirables from Holy Writ. Then, with inspiration, she
+added--"Barabbas."
+
+The man made another effort to rise; but Mrs. Bindle brought the end of
+the mop down upon his head with a crack that sounded like a pistol-shot.
+
+The expression on Charley's face changed. The lower jaw lifted. The
+loose, vacuous mouth spread. Charley was grinning.
+
+For a moment the man lay still. Mrs. Bindle was standing over him with
+the mop, a tense and righteously indignant St. George over a
+particularly evil dragon.
+
+Suddenly he gave tongue.
+
+"'Elp!" he yelled. "I'm bein' murdered. 'Elp! Charley, where are you?"
+But Charley's grin had expanded and he was actually rubbing his hands
+with enjoyment.
+
+Mrs. Bindle brought the mop down on the man's mouth. "Stop it, you
+blaspheming son o' Belial," she cried.
+
+The big man roared the louder; but he made no effort to rise.
+
+"'Ere comes a flatty," cried a voice.
+
+"Slop's a-comin'," echoed another, and a minute later, a clean-shaven
+embodiment of youthful dignity and self-possession, in a helmet and blue
+uniform, approached and began to make his way through the crowd towards
+the Bindles' gate.
+
+From the position in which he lay the big man, unable to see that
+assistance was at hand, continued to roar for help.
+
+At the approach of this symbol of the law, Mrs. Bindle stepped back and
+brought her mop to the stand-at-ease position.
+
+The policeman looked from one to the other, and then proceeded to ferret
+somewhere in the tails of his tunic, whence he produced a notebook. This
+was obviously a case requiring literary expression.
+
+The big man, seeing Mrs. Bindle fall back, turned his head and caught a
+glimpse of the policeman. Very cautiously he raised himself to a sitting
+posture.
+
+"She's been murderin' me," he said, with one eye fixed warily upon the
+mop. "'Ere, Charley!" he cried, looking over his left shoulder.
+
+Charley reluctantly approached, regretful that law and order had
+triumphed over red revolution.
+
+"Ain't she been tryin' to kill me?" demanded the big man of his
+offspring.
+
+"Biffed 'im on the 'ead wiv the 'andle," corroborated the boy in a
+toneless voice.
+
+"Poured water over me and 'it me in the stummick too, didn't she,
+Charley?" Once more the big man turned to his son for corroboration.
+
+"Got 'im a rare 'un too!" agreed Charley, with a feeling in his voice
+that caused his father to look at him sharply. "Sloshed 'im on the jaw
+too," he added, as if finding pleasure in dwelling upon the sufferings
+of his parent.
+
+"Do you wish to charge her?" asked the policeman in an official voice.
+
+"'Charge me!'" broke in Mrs. Bindle. "'Charge me!' I should like to see
+'im do it. See what 'e's done to my geraniums, bringing his filthy
+sticks into my front garden. 'Charge me!'" she repeated. "Just let him
+try it!" and she brought the mop to a position from which it could be
+launched at the big man's head.
+
+Instinctively he sank down again on to the path, and the policeman
+interposed his body between the weapon and the vanquished.
+
+"There's plenty of witnesses here to prove what he done," cried Mrs.
+Bindle shrilly.
+
+Once more the big man raised himself to a sitting posture; but Mrs.
+Bindle had no intention of allowing him to control the situation. To her
+a policeman meant justice, and to this self-possessed lad in the uniform
+of unlimited authority she opened her heart and, at the same time, the
+vials of her wrath.
+
+"'Ere was I ironin' in my kitchen when this rabble," she indicated the
+crowd with the handle of the mop, "descended upon me like the plague of
+locusts." To Mrs. Bindle, scriptural allusion was a necessity.
+
+"They said they wanted to take my 'ouse. Said I'd told them it was to
+let, the perjured scum of Judas. Then _he_ came along"--she pointed to
+her victim who was gingerly feeling the bump that Mrs. Bindle's mop had
+raised--"and threw all that dirty lumber into my garden, and--and----"
+Here her voice broke, for to Mrs. Bindle those geranium slips were very
+dear.
+
+"You'd better get up."
+
+At the policeman's words the big man rose heavily to his feet. For a
+moment he stood still, as if to make quite sure that no bones were
+broken. Then his hand went to his neck-cloth and he produced a piece of
+hearthstone which had, apparently, become detached from the parent slab.
+
+"Threw bricks at me," he complained, holding out the piece of
+hearthstone to the policeman.
+
+"Ananias!" came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising retort.
+
+"Do you want to charge her?" asked the policeman brusquely.
+
+"Serves 'im jolly well right," cried the woman with the tweed cap and
+hat-pin, pushing her way in front of a big man who obstructed her view.
+
+"Oughter be run-in 'isself," agreed a pallid woman with a shawl over her
+head.
+
+"Look wot 'e done to 'er garding," mumbled the rag-and-bone man,
+pointing at the flower-bed with the air of one who has just made an
+important discovery.
+
+"It's the likes of 'im wot makes strikes," commented the woman in the
+dolman. "Blinkin' profiteer."
+
+"She's got pluck, any'ow," said a telephone mechanic, who had joined the
+crowd just before Charley's father had bent before the wind of Mrs.
+Bindle's displeasure. "Knocked 'im out in the first round. Regular
+George Carpenter," he added.
+
+"You get them things out of my garden. If you don't I'll give you in
+charge."
+
+The big man blinked, a puzzled expression creeping into his eyes. He
+looked at the policeman uncomprehendingly. This was an aspect of the
+case that had not, hitherto, struck him.
+
+"Are they your things?" asked the policeman, intent upon disentangling
+the situation before proceeding to use the pencil, the point of which he
+was meditatively sucking.
+
+Charley's father nodded. He was still thinking over Mrs. Bindle's
+remark. It seemed to open up disconcerting possibilities.
+
+"Now then, what are you going to do?" demanded the policeman sternly.
+"Do you wish to make a charge?"
+
+"I will," said Mrs. Bindle, "unless 'e takes 'is furniture away and pays
+for the damage to my flowers. I'll charge 'im, the great, 'ulking brute,
+attacking a defenceless woman because he knows 'er 'usband's out."
+
+"That's right, missis, you 'ave 'im quodded," called out the
+rag-and-bone man. "'E didn't ought to 'ave done that to your garding."
+
+"Tryin' to swank us 'e'd taken the 'ouse," cried the woman with the
+tweed cap and hat-pin. "I see through 'im from the first, I did. There
+ain't many men wot can throw dust in my eyes," she added, looking
+eagerly round for a dissenting look.
+
+"'Ullo, 'ullo!" cried a voice from the outskirts of the crowd. "Somebody
+givin' somethink away, or is it a fire? 'Ere, let me pass, I'm the cove
+wot pays the rent," and Bindle pushed his genial way through the crowd.
+
+They made way without protest. The advent of the newcomer suggested
+further dramatic developments, possibly even a fight.
+
+"'Ullo, Tichborne!" cried Bindle, catching sight of the big man. "Been
+scrappin'?"
+
+The three protagonists in the drama turned, as if with relief, to face
+this new phase of the situation.
+
+"'Oo's 'e?" enquired Bindle of the policeman, indicating the big man
+with a jerk of his thumb.
+
+"He's been tryin' to murder me, and if you were a man, Joe Bindle, you'd
+kill 'im."
+
+Bindle subjected the big man to an elaborate scrutiny. "Looks to me," he
+remarked drily, "as if someone's got in before me. Wot's 'appened?" He
+looked interrogatingly up at the policeman.
+
+"'Oly 'Orace," he cried suddenly, as he caught sight of the
+miscellaneous collection of furniture that lay about the geranium bed.
+"What's that little pawnshop a-doin' on our front garden?"
+
+With the aid of the rag-and-bone man and the woman with the tweed cap
+and hat-pin, the whole situation was explained and expounded to both
+Bindle and the policeman.
+
+When he had heard everything, Bindle turned to the big man, who stood
+sulkily awaiting events.
+
+"Now, look 'ere, cully," he said. "You didn't oughter start doin' them
+sort o' things with a figure like yours. When Mrs. B. gets 'old of a
+broom, or a mop, the safest thing to do is to draw in your solar-plexus
+an' run. It 'urts less. Now, speakin' as a Christian to a bloomin'
+'eathen wot's done 'imself pretty well, judgin' from the size of 'is
+pinafore, you'd better send for the coachman, 'arness up that there dray
+o' yours, carry orf them bits o' sticks an' let bygones be bygones.
+Ain't that good advice?" He turned to the policeman for corroboration.
+
+There was a flicker of a smile at the corners of the policeman's mouth,
+which seemed not so very many years before to have been lisping baby
+language. He looked at the big man. It was not for him to advise.
+
+"'Ere, Charley, blaaarst you," cried the big man, pushing his way to the
+gate. He had decided that the dice had gone against him. "Get them
+things on to the blinkin' barrer, you stutterin' young pup. Wot the
+purple----"
+
+"Here, that's enough of that," said a quiet, determined voice, and the
+soft lines of the policeman's face hardened.
+
+"Wot she want to say it was to let for?" he grumbled as he loped towards
+the hand-cart.
+
+"'Ere 'ave I come wiv all these things to take the blinkin' 'ouse, then
+there's all this ruddy fuss. Are you goin' to get over into that
+blinkin' garden and fetch out them stutterin' things, or must I chuck
+you over?"
+
+The last remark was addressed to Charley, who, with a wary eye on his
+parent, had been watching events, hoping against hope that the policeman
+would manifest signs of aggression, and carry on the good work that Mrs.
+Bindle had begun.
+
+Charley glanced interrogatingly at the policeman. Seeing in his eye no
+encouragement to mutiny, he sidled towards the gate, a watchful eye
+still on his father. A moment later he was engaged in handing the
+furniture over the railings.
+
+After the man had deposited the colander, a tin-bath, and two saucepans
+in the barrow, he seemed suddenly smitten with an idea.
+
+He tugged a soiled newspaper from his trouser pocket. Glancing at it, he
+walked over to where the policeman was engaged in moving on the crowd.
+
+"Read that," he said, thrusting the paper under the officer's nose and
+pointing to a passage with a dirty forefinger. "Don't that say the
+blinkin' 'ouse is to let? You oughter run 'er in for false----" He
+paused. "For false----" he repeated.
+
+With a motion of his hand, the policeman brushed aside the newspaper.
+
+"Move along there, please. Don't block up the footpath," he said.
+
+At length the barrow was laden.
+
+The policeman stood by with the air of a man whose duty it is to see the
+thing through.
+
+The crowd still loitered. They had even yet hopes of a breach of the
+peace.
+
+The big man was reluctant to go without a final effort to rehabilitate
+himself. Once more he drew the paper from his pocket and approached the
+policeman.
+
+"Wot she put that in for?" he demanded, indicating the advertisement.
+
+Ignoring the remark, the policeman drew his notebook once more from his
+pocket.
+
+"I shall want your name and address," he said with an official air.
+
+"Wotjer want it for?"
+
+"Now, then, come along," said the policeman, and the big man gave his
+name and address.
+
+"Wot she do it for?" he repeated, "an' wot's going to 'appen to 'er for
+'ittin' me in the stummick?"
+
+"You'd better get along," said the policeman.
+
+With a grumble in his throat, the big man placed himself between the
+shafts of the barrow and, having blasted Charley into action, moved off.
+
+"Made a rare mess of the garding, ain't 'e?" remarked the rag-and-bone
+man to the woman with the tweed cap and the hat-pin.
+
+"Blinkin' profiteer!" was her comment.
+
+
+II
+
+"It's all your fault. Look wot they done." Mrs. Bindle surveyed the
+desolation which, that morning, had been a garden.
+
+The bed was trodden down, the geraniums broken, and the lobelia border
+showed big gaps in its blue and greenness.
+
+"It's always the same with anything I 'ave," she continued. "You always
+spoil it."
+
+"But it wasn't me," protested Bindle. "It was that big cove with the
+pinafore."
+
+"Who put that advertisement in?" demanded Mrs. Bindle darkly. "That's
+what _I_ should like to know."
+
+"Somebody wot 'ad put the wrong number," suggested Bindle.
+
+"I'd wrong number them if I caught them."
+
+Suddenly she turned and made a bolt inside the house.
+
+Bindle regarded the open door in surprise. A moment later his quick ears
+caught the sound of Mrs. Bindle's hysterical sobbing.
+
+"Now ain't that jest like a woman?" was his comment. "She put 'im to
+sleep in the first round, an' still she ain't 'appy. Funny things,
+women," he added.
+
+That evening as Mrs. Bindle closed the front door behind her on her way
+to the Wednesday temperance service, she turned her face to the garden;
+it had been in her mind all day.
+
+She blinked incredulously. The lobelia seemed bluer than ever, and
+within the circular border was a veritable riot of flowering geraniums.
+
+"It's that Bindle again," she muttered with indrawn lips as she turned
+towards the gate. "Pity he hasn't got something better to do with his
+money." Nevertheless she placed upon the supper-table an apple-tart that
+had been made for to-morrow's dinner, to which she added a cup of
+coffee, of which Bindle was particularly fond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY
+
+
+I
+
+"I see they're starting summer-camps." Mrs. Bindle looked up from
+reading the previous evening's paper. She was invariably twelve hours
+late with the world's news.
+
+Bindle continued his breakfast. He was too absorbed in Mrs. Bindle's
+method of serving dried haddock with bubble-and-squeak to evince much
+interest in alien things.
+
+"That's right," she continued after a pause, "don't you answer. Your
+ears are in your stomach. Pleasant companion you are. I might as well be
+on a desert island for all the company you are."
+
+"If you wasn't such a damn good cook, Mrs. B., I might find time to say
+pretty things to you." It was only in relation to her own cooking that
+Bindle's conversational lapses passed without rebuke.
+
+"There are to be camps for men, camps for women, and family camps,"
+continued Mrs. Bindle without raising her eyes from the paper before
+her.
+
+"Personally myself I says put me among the gals." The remark reached
+Mrs. Bindle through a mouthful of haddock and bubble-and-squeak, plus a
+fish-bone.
+
+"You don't deserve to have a decent home, the way you talk."
+
+There were times when no answer, however gentle, was capable of turning
+aside Mrs. Bindle's wrath. On Sunday mornings in particular she found
+the burden of Bindle's transgressions weigh heavily upon her.
+
+Bindle sucked contentedly at a hollow tooth. He was feeling generously
+inclined towards all humanity. Haddock, bubble-and-squeak, and his own
+philosophy enabled him to withstand the impact of Mrs. Bindle's most
+vigorous offensive.
+
+"It's years since I had a holiday," she continued complainingly.
+
+"It is, Mrs. B.," agreed Bindle, drawing his pipe from his coat pocket
+and proceeding to charge it from a small oblong tin box. "We ain't
+exactly wot you'd call an 'oneymoon couple, you an' me."
+
+"The war's over."
+
+"It is," he agreed.
+
+"Then why can't we have a holiday?" she demanded, looking up
+aggressively from her paper.
+
+"Now I asks you, Mrs. B.," he said, as he returned the tin box to his
+pocket, "can you see you an' me in a bell-tent, or paddlin', or playin'
+ring-a-ring-a-roses?" and he proceeded to light his pipe with the
+blissful air of a man who knows that it is Sunday, and that The Yellow
+Ostrich will open its hospitable doors a few hours hence.
+
+"It says they're very comfortable," Mrs. Bindle continued, her eyes
+still glued to the paper.
+
+"Wot is?"
+
+"The tents."
+
+"You ought to ask Ging wot a bell-tent's like, 'e'd sort o' surprise
+you. It's worse'n a wife, 'otter than religion, colder than a
+blue-ribboner. When it's 'ot it bakes you, when it's cold it lets you
+freeze, and when it's blowin' 'ell an' tinkers, it 'oofs it, an' leaves
+you with nothink on, a-blushin' like a curate 'avin' 'is first dip with
+the young women in the choir. That's wot a bell-tent is, Mrs. B. In the
+army they calls 'em 'ell-tents."
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me," she snapped as she rose and proceeded to clear
+away the breakfast-things, during which she expressed the state of her
+feelings by the vigour with which she banged every utensil she handled.
+As she did so Bindle proceeded to explain and expound the salient
+characteristics of the army bell-tent.
+
+"When you wants it to stand up," he continued, "it comes down, you bein'
+underneath. When you wants it to come down, nothing on earth'll move it,
+till you goes inside to 'ave a look round an' see wot's the trouble,
+then down it comes on top o' you. It's a game, that's wot it is," he
+added with conviction, "a game wot nobody ain't goin' to win but the
+tent."
+
+"Go on talking, you're not hurting me," said Mrs. Bindle, with indrawn
+lower lip, as she brought down the teapot upon the dresser with a super
+bang.
+
+"I've 'eard Ging talk o' twins, war, women, an' the beer-shortage; but
+to 'ear 'im at 'is best, you got to get 'im to talk about bell-tents."
+
+"Everybody else has a holiday except me." Mrs. Bindle was not to be
+diverted from her subject. "Here am I, slavin' my fingers to the bone,
+inchin' and pinchin' to keep you in comfort, an' I can't 'ave a holiday.
+It's a shame, that's what it is, and it's all your fault." She paused in
+the act of wiping out the inside of the frying-pan, and stood before
+Bindle like an accusing fury. Anger always sullied the purity of her
+diction.
+
+"Well, why don't you 'ave an 'oliday if you set yer 'eart on it? I ain't
+got nothink to say agin it." He continued to puff contentedly at his
+pipe, wondering what had become of the paper-boy. Bindle had become too
+inured to the lurid qualities of domesticity to allow them to perturb
+him.
+
+"'Ow can I go alone?"
+
+"You'd be safe enough."
+
+"You beast!" Bindle was startled by the vindictiveness with which the
+words were uttered.
+
+For a few minutes there was silence, punctuated by Mrs. Bindle's
+vigorous clearing away. Presently she passed over to the sink and turned
+on the tap.
+
+"Nice thing for a married woman to go away alone," she hurled at Bindle
+over her shoulder, amidst the rushing of water.
+
+"Well, take 'Earty," he suggested, with the air of a man anxious to find
+a way out of a difficulty.
+
+"You're a dirty-minded beast," was the retort.
+
+"An' this Sunday, too. Oh, naughty!"
+
+"You never take me anywhere." Mrs. Bindle was not to be denied.
+
+"I took you to church once," he said reminiscently.
+
+"Why don't you take me out now?" she demanded, ignoring his remark.
+
+"Well," he remarked, as he dug into the bowl of his pipe with a
+match-stick, "when you caught a bus, you don't go on a-runnin' after it,
+do you?"
+
+"Why don't you get a week off and take me away?"
+
+"Well, I'll think about it." Bindle rose and, picking up his hat, left
+the room, with the object of seeking the missing paper-boy.
+
+The loneliness of her life was one of Mrs. Bindle's stock grievances. If
+she had been reminded of the Chinese proverb that to have friends you
+must deserve friends, she would have waxed scornful. Friends, she seemed
+to think, were a matter of luck, like a goose in a raffle, or a rich
+uncle.
+
+"It's little enough pleasure I get," she would cry, in moments of
+passionate protest.
+
+To this, Bindle would sometimes reply that "it's wantin' a thing wot
+makes you get it." Sometimes he would go on to elaborate the theory into
+the impossibility of "'avin' a thing for supper an' savin' it for
+breakfast."
+
+By this, he meant to convey to Mrs. Bindle that she was too set on
+post-mortem joys to get the full flavour of those of this world.
+
+Mrs. Bindle possessed the soul of a potential martyr. If she found she
+were enjoying herself, she would become convinced that, somewhere
+associated with it, must be Sin with a capital "S", unless of course the
+enjoyment were directly connected with the chapel.
+
+She was fully convinced that it was wrong to be happy. Laughter inspired
+her with distrust, as laughter rose from carnal thoughts carnally
+expressed. She fought with a relentless courage the old Adam within
+herself, inspired always by the thought that her reward would come in
+another and a better world.
+
+Her theology was that you must give up in this world all that your
+"carnal nature" cries out for, and your reward in the next world will be
+a sort of perpetual jamboree, where you will see the damned being boiled
+in oil, or nipped with red-hot pincers by little devils with curly
+tails. In this she had little to learn either from a Dante, or the
+Spanish Inquisition.
+
+The Biblical descriptions of heaven she accepted in all their
+literalness. She expected golden streets and jewelled gates, wings of
+ineffable whiteness and harps of an inspired sweetness, the whole
+composed by an orchestra capable of playing without break or interval.
+
+She insisted that the world was wicked, just as she insisted that it was
+miserable. She struggled hard to bring the light of salvation to Bindle,
+and she groaned in spirit at his obvious happiness, knowing that to be
+happy was to be damned.
+
+To her, a soul was what a scalp is to the American Indian. She strove
+to collect them, knowing that the believer who went to salvation with
+the greatest number of saved souls dangling at her girdle, would be
+thrice welcome, and thrice blessed.
+
+In Bindle's case, however, she had to fall back upon the wheat that fell
+upon stony ground. With a cheerfulness that he made no effort to
+disguise, Bindle declined to be saved.
+
+"Look 'ere, Lizzie," he would say cheerily. "Two 'arps is quite enough
+for one family and, as you and 'Earty are sure of 'em, you leave me
+alone."
+
+One of Mrs. Bindle's principal complaints against Bindle was that he
+never took her out.
+
+"You could take me out fast enough once," she would complain.
+
+"But where'm I to take you?" cried Bindle. "You don't like the pictures,
+you won't go to the 'alls, and I can't stand that smelly little chapel
+of yours, listenin' to a cove wot tells you 'ow uncomfortable you're
+goin' to be when you're cold meat."
+
+"You could take me for a walk, couldn't you?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"When I takes you round the 'ouses, you bully-rags me because I
+cheer-o's my pals, and if we passes a pub you makes pleasant little
+remarks about gin-palaces. Tell you wot it is, Mrs. B.," he remarked on
+one occasion, "you ain't good company, at least not in this world," he
+added.
+
+"That's right, go on," Mrs. Bindle would conclude. "Why did you marry
+me?"
+
+"There, Mrs. B.," he would reply, "you 'ave me beaten."
+
+From the moment that Mrs. Bindle read of the Bishop of Fulham's
+Summer-Camps for Tired Workers, she became obsessed by the idea of a
+holiday in a summer-camp. She was one of the first to apply for the
+literature that was advertised as distributed free.
+
+The evening-paper that Bindle brought home possessed a new interest for
+her.
+
+"Anything about the summer-camps?" she would ask, interrupting Bindle in
+his study of the cricket and racing news, until at last he came to hate
+the very name of summer-camps and all they implied.
+
+"That's the worst o' religion," he grumbled one night at The Yellow
+Ostrich; "it comes a-buttin' into your 'ome life, an' then there ain't
+no peace."
+
+"I don't 'old wiv religion," growled Ginger.
+
+"I ain't got nothink to say against religion _as_ religion," Bindle had
+remarked; "but I bars summer-camps."
+
+Mrs. Bindle, however, was packing. With all the care of a practised
+housewife, she first devoted herself to the necessary cooking-utensils.
+She packed and unpacked half-a-dozen times a day, always stowing away
+some article that, a few minutes later, she found she required.
+
+Her conversation at meal-times was devoted exclusively to what they
+should take with them. She asked innumerable questions, none of which
+Bindle was able satisfactorily to answer. To him the bucolic life was a
+closed book; but he soon realised that a holiday at the Surrey
+Summer-Camp was inevitable.
+
+"Wot am I to do in a summer-camp?" he mumbled, one evening after supper.
+"I can drive an 'orse, if some one's leadin' it, an' I knows it's an 'en
+wot lays the eggs an' the cock wot makes an 'ell of a row in the
+mornin', same as them ole 'orrors we used to 'ave; but barrin' that, I'm
+done."
+
+"That's right," broke in Mrs. Bindle, "try and spoil my pleasure, it's
+little enough I get."
+
+"But wot are we goin' to do in the country?" persisted Bindle with
+wrinkled forehead. "I don't like gardenin', an'----"
+
+"Pity you don't," she snapped.
+
+"Yes, it's a pity," he agreed; "still, it's saved me an 'ell of a lot o'
+back-aches. But wot are we goin' to do in a summer-camp, that's wot I
+want to know."
+
+"You'll be getting fresh air and--and you can watch the sunsets."
+
+"But the sun ain't goin' to set all day," he persisted. "Besides, I can
+see the sunset from Putney Bridge, an' damn good sunsets too, for them
+as likes 'em. There ain't no need to go to a summer-camp to see a
+sunset."
+
+"You can go on, you're not hurting me." Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips and
+sat looking straight in front of her, a grim figure of Christian
+patience.
+
+"I can't milk a cow," Bindle continued disconsolately, reviewing his
+limitations. "I can't catch chickens, me with various veins in my legs,
+I 'ates the smell o' pigs, an' I ain't good at weedin' gardens. Now I
+asks you, Mrs. B., wot use am I at a summer-camp? I'll only be a sort o'
+fly in the drippin'."
+
+"You can enjoy yourself, I suppose, can't you?" she snapped.
+
+"But 'ow?"
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me. I'm sick and tired of your grumbling, with your
+don't like this, an' your don't like that. Pity you haven't something to
+grumble about."
+
+"But I ain't----"
+
+"There's many men would be glad to have a home like yours, an' chance
+it."
+
+"Naughty!" cried Bindle, wagging an admonitory finger at her. "If I----"
+
+"Stop it!" she cried, jumping up, and making a dash for the fire, which
+she proceeded to poke into extinction.
+
+Meanwhile, Bindle had stopped it, seizing the opportunity whilst Mrs.
+Bindle was engaged with the fire, to slip out to The Yellow Ostrich.
+
+
+II
+
+"Looks a bit lonely, don't it?" Bindle gazed about him doubtfully.
+
+"What did you expect in the country?" snapped Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Well, a tram or a bus would make it look more 'ome-like."
+
+The Bindles were standing on the down platform of Boxton Station
+surrounded by their luggage. There was a Japanese basket bursting to
+reveal its contents, a large cardboard hat-box, a small leather bag
+without a handle and tied round the middle with string to reinforce a
+dubious fastening. There was a string-bag blatantly confessing to its
+heterogeneous contents, and a roll of blankets, through the centre of
+which poked Mrs. Bindle's second-best umbrella, with a travesty of a
+parrot's head for a handle.
+
+There was a small deal box without a lid and marked "Tate's Sugar," and
+a frying-pan done up in newspaper, but still obviously a frying-pan.
+Finally there was a small tin-bath, full to overflowing, and covered by
+a faded maroon-coloured table-cover that had seen better days.
+
+Bindle looked down ruefully at the litter of possessions that formed an
+oasis on a desert of platform.
+
+"They ain't afraid of anythink 'appening 'ere," he remarked, as he
+looked about him. "Funny little 'ole, I calls it."
+
+Mrs. Bindle was obviously troubled. She had been clearly told at the
+temporary offices of the Committee of the Summer-Camps for Tired
+Workers, that a cart met the train by which she and Bindle had
+travelled; yet nowhere was there a sign of life. Vainly in her own mind
+she strove to associate Bindle with the cause of their standing alone on
+a country railway-platform, surrounded by so uninviting a collection of
+luggage.
+
+Presently an old man was observed leaving the distant signal-box and
+hobbling slowly towards them. When within a few yards of the Bindles, he
+halted and gazed doubtfully, first at them, then at the pile of their
+possessions. Finally he removed his cap of office as railway porter, and
+scratched his head dubiously.
+
+"I missed un that time," he said at length, as he replaced his cap.
+
+"Missed who?" enquired Bindle.
+
+"The four-forty," replied the old man, stepping aside to get a better
+view of the luggage. "Got a-talkin' to Young Tom an' clean forgot un."
+It was clear that he regarded the episode in the light of a good joke.
+"Yours?" he queried a moment later, indicating with a jerk of his head
+the litter on the platform.
+
+"Got it first time, grandpa," said Bindle cheerfully. "We come to start
+a pawnshop in these parts," he added.
+
+The porter looked at Bindle with a puzzled expression, then his gaze
+wandered back to the luggage and finally on to Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"We've come to join the Summer-Camp," she explained.
+
+"The Summer-Camp!" repeated the man, "the Summer-Camp!" Then he suddenly
+broke into a breeze of chuckles. He looked from Mrs. Bindle to the
+luggage and from the luggage to Bindle, little gusts of throaty croaks
+eddying and flowing. Finally with a resounding smack he brought his hand
+down upon his fustian thigh.
+
+"Well, I'm danged," he chuckled, "if that ain't a good un. I maun go an'
+tell Young Tom," and he turned preparatory to making off for the
+signal-box.
+
+Bindle, however, by a swift movement barred his way.
+
+"If it's as funny as all that, ole sport, wot's the matter with tellin'
+us all about it?"
+
+Once more the old man stuttered off into a fugue of chuckles.
+
+"Young Tom'll laugh over this, 'e will," he gasped; "'e'll split
+'isself."
+
+"I suppose they don't 'ave much to amuse 'em," said Bindle patiently.
+"Now then, wot's it all about?" he demanded.
+
+"Wrong station," spluttered the ancient. Then a moment later he added,
+"You be wantin' West Boxton. Camp's there. Three mile away. There ain't
+another train stoppin' here to-night," he added.
+
+Mrs. Bindle looked at Bindle. Her lips had disappeared; but she said
+nothing. The arrangements had been entirely in her hands, and it was she
+who had purchased the tickets.
+
+"How far did you say it was?" she demanded of the porter in a tone that
+seemed, as if by magic, to dry up the fountain of his mirth.
+
+"Three mile, mum," he replied, making a shuffling movement in the
+direction of where Young Tom stood beside his levers, all unconscious of
+the splendid joke that had come to cheer his solitude. Mrs. Bindle,
+however, placed herself directly in his path, grim and determined. The
+man fell back a pace, casting an appealing look at Bindle.
+
+"Where can we get a cart?" she demanded with the air of one who has
+taken an important decision.
+
+The porter scratched his head through his cap and considered deeply,
+then with a sudden flank movement and a muttered, "I'll ask Young Tom,"
+he shuffled off in the direction of the signal-box.
+
+Bindle gazed dubiously at the pile of their possessions, and then at
+Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Three miles," he muttered. "You didn't ought to be trusted out with a
+young chap like me, Mrs. B.," he said reproachfully.
+
+"That's enough, Bindle."
+
+Without another word she stalked resolutely along the platform in the
+direction of the signal-box. The old porter happening to glance over his
+shoulder saw her coming, and broke into a shambling trot, determined to
+obtain the moral support of Young Tom before another encounter.
+
+Drawing his pipe from his pocket, Bindle sank down upon the tin-bath,
+jumping up instantly, conscious that something had given way beneath him
+with a crack suggestive of broken crockery. Reseating himself upon the
+bundle of blankets, he proceeded to smoke contentedly. After all,
+something would happen, something always did.
+
+Twenty minutes elapsed before Mrs. Bindle returned with the announcement
+that the signalman had telegraphed to West Boxton for a cart.
+
+"Well, well," said Bindle philosophically, "it's turnin' out an 'appy
+day; but I could do with a drink."
+
+An hour later a cart rumbled its noisy way up to the station, outside
+which stood the Bindles and their luggage. A business-like little boy
+scout slid off the tail.
+
+"You want to go to the Camp?" he asked briskly.
+
+"Well," began Bindle, "I can't say that I----"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Bindle, seeing in the boy scout her St. George;
+"we got out at the wrong station." She looked across at Bindle as she
+spoke, as if to indicate where lay the responsibility for the mistake.
+
+"All right!" said the friend of all the world. "We'll soon get you
+there."
+
+"An' who might you be, young-fellow-my-lad?" enquired Bindle.
+
+"I'm Patrol-leader Smithers of the Bear Patrol," was the response.
+
+"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Well, well, it's live an' learn, ain't
+it?"
+
+"Now we'll get the luggage up," said Patrol-leader Smithers.
+
+"'Ow 'Aig an' Foch must miss you," remarked Bindle as between them they
+hoisted up the tin-bath; but the lad was too intent upon the work on
+hand for persiflage.
+
+A difficulty presented itself in how Mrs. Bindle was to get into the
+cart. Her intense sensitiveness, coupled with the knowledge that there
+would be four strange pairs of male eyes watching her, constituted a
+serious obstacle. Young Tom, in whom was nothing of the spirit of Jack
+Cornwell, and his friend the old porter made no effort to disguise the
+fact that they were determined to see the drama through to the last
+fade-out.
+
+Bindle's suggestion that he should "'oist" her up, Mrs. Bindle had
+ignored, and she flatly refused to climb the spokes of the wheel. The
+step in front was nearly a yard from the ground, and Mrs. Bindle
+resented Young Tom's sandy leer.
+
+It was Patrol-leader Smithers who eventually solved the problem by
+suggesting a dandy-chair, to which Mrs. Bindle reluctantly agreed.
+Accordingly Bindle and the porter crossed arms and clasped one another's
+wrists.
+
+Mrs. Bindle took up a position with her back to the tail of the cart,
+and the two Sir Walters bent down, whilst Patrol-leader Smithers turned
+his back and, with great delicacy, strove to engage the fixed eye of
+Young Tom; but without success.
+
+"Now when I says 'eave--'eave," Bindle admonished the porter.
+
+Gingerly Mrs. Bindle sat down upon their crossed hands.
+
+"One, two, three--'eave!" cried Bindle, and they heaved.
+
+There was a loud guffaw from Young Tom, a stifled scream, and Mrs.
+Bindle was safely in the cart; but on her back, with the soles of her
+elastic-sided boots pointing to heaven. Bindle had under-estimated the
+thews of the porter.
+
+"Right away!" cried Patrol-leader Smithers, feeling that prompt action
+alone could terminate so regrettable an incident, and he and Bindle
+clambered up into the cart, where Mrs. Bindle, having regained control
+of her movements, was angrily tucking her skirts about her.
+
+The cart jerked forward, and Young Tom and his colleague grinned their
+valedictions, in their hearts the knowledge that they had just lived a
+crowded hour of glorious life.
+
+The cart jolted its uneasy way along the dusty high-road, with Bindle
+beside the driver, Mrs. Bindle sitting on the blankets as grim as
+Destiny itself, engaged in working up a case against Bindle, and the boy
+scout watchful and silent, as behoves the leader of an enterprise.
+
+Bindle soon discovered that conversationally the carter was limited to
+the "Aye" of agreement, varied in moments of unwonted enthusiasm with an
+"Oh, aye!"
+
+At the end of half an hour's jolt, squeak, and crunch, the cart turned
+into a lane overhung by giant elms, where the sun-dried ruts were like
+miniature trenches.
+
+"Better hold on," counselled the lad, as he made a clutch at the
+Japanese basket, which was in danger of going overboard. "It's a bit
+bumpy here."
+
+"Fancy place in wet weather," murmured Bindle, as he held on with both
+hands. "So this is the Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers," and he
+gazed about him curiously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SUMMER CAMP FOR TIRED WORKERS
+
+
+The Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired Workers had been planned by the Bishop
+of Fulham out of the largeness of his heart and the plenitude of his
+inexperience in such undertakings. He had borrowed a meadow, acquired a
+cow, hired a marquee, and wangled fifty army bell-tents and a
+field-kitchen, about which in all probability questions would be asked
+in the House. Finally as the result of a brain-wave he had requisitioned
+the local boy scouts. Later there would be the devil to pay with the
+leaders of the Boys' Brigade; but the bishop abounded in tact.
+
+When the time came, the meadow was there, the bell-tents, the cow, and
+the boy scouts duly arrived; but of the marquee nothing had been seen or
+heard, and as for the field-kitchen, the War Office could say little
+beyond the fact that it had left Aldershot.
+
+For days the bishop worked indefatigably with telephone and telegraph,
+endeavouring to trace the errant field-kitchen and the missing marquee;
+but so much of his time had been occupied in obtaining the necessary
+assistance to ensure that the cow was properly and punctually milked,
+that other things, being farther away, had seemed less insistent.
+
+In those days the bishop had much to worry him; but his real cross was
+Daisy, the cow. Everything else was of minor importance compared with
+this bovine responsibility. Vaguely he had felt that if you had a cow
+you had milk; but he was to discover that on occasion a cow could be as
+unproductive of milk as a sea-serpent.
+
+None of the campers had ever approached a cow in her professional
+capacity. Night and morning she had to be relieved of a twelve hours'
+accumulation of milk, all knew that; but how? That was a question which
+had perturbed bishop and campers alike; for the whole camp shared the
+ecclesiastical anxiety about Daisy. Somewhere at the back of the cockney
+mind was the suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that, unless
+regularly milked, cows exploded, like overcharged water-mains.
+
+Daisy soon developed into something more than a cow. When other
+occupations failed (amusements there were none), the campers would
+collect round Daisy, examining her from every angle. She was a mystery,
+just as a juggler or the three-card trick were mysteries, and as such
+she commanded respect.
+
+Each night and morning the bishop had to produce from somewhere a person
+capable of ministering to the requirements of Daisy, and everyone in the
+neighbourhood was extremely busy. Apart from this, West Boxton was a
+hot-bed of Nonconformity, and some of the inhabitants were much
+exercised in their minds as to the spiritual effect upon a Dissenter of
+milking a church cow.
+
+There were times when the bishop felt like a conjurer, billed to produce
+a guinea-pig from a top-hat, who had left the guinea-pig at home.
+
+Daisy was not without her uses, quite apart from those for which she had
+been provided by Providence and the bishop. "Come an' 'ave a look at
+Daisy," had become the conversational forlorn hope of the campers when
+utterly bankrupt of all other interests. She was their shield against
+boredom and the spear with which to slay the dragon of apathy.
+
+"No beer, no pictures, only a ruddy cow," a cynic had remarked in
+summing up the amusements provided by the Surrey Summer-Camp for Tired
+Workers. "Enough to give a giddy flea the blinkin' 'ump," he had
+concluded; but his was only an isolated view. For the most part these
+shipwrecked cockneys were grateful to Daisy, and they never tired of
+watching the milk spurt musically into the bright pail beneath her.
+
+The bishop was well-meaning, but forgetful. In planning his camp he had
+entirely overlooked the difficulty of food and water supplies. The one
+was a mile distant and could not be brought nearer; the other had been
+overcome by laying a pipe, at considerable expense.
+
+In the natural order of disaster the campers had arrived, and in a very
+few hours became tinctured with the heresy of anti-clericalism. Husbands
+quarrelled with wives as to who should bear the responsibility for the
+adventure to which they found themselves committed. One and all
+questioned the right of a bishop to precipitate himself into the
+domestic circle as a bearer of discord and summer-camps.
+
+At the time of the arrival of the Bindles, everything seemed chaos.
+There was a spatter of bell-tents on the face of the meadow, piles of
+personal possessions at the entrance of the tents, whilst the "tired
+workers" loitered about in their shirt sleeves, or strove to prepare
+meals in spite of the handicaps with which they were surrounded. The
+children stood about wide-eyed and grave, as if unable to play their
+urban games in a bucolic setting.
+
+When, under the able command of Patrol-leader Smithers, the Bindles'
+belongings had been piled up just inside the meadow and Mrs. Bindle
+helped down, sore in body and disturbed in temper, the indefatigable boy
+scout led the way towards a tent. He carried the Japanese basket in one
+hand, and the handleless bag under the other arm, whilst Bindle followed
+with the tin-bath, and Mrs. Bindle made herself responsible for the
+bundle of blankets, through the centre of which the parrot-headed
+umbrella peeped out coyly.
+
+Their guide paused at the entrance of a bell-tent, and deposited the
+Japanese basket on the ground.
+
+"This is your tent," he announced, "I'll send one of the patrol to help
+you," and, with the air of one upon whose shoulders rests the destiny
+of planets, he departed.
+
+Bindle and Mrs. Bindle gazed after him, then at each other, finally at
+the tent. Bindle stepped across and put his head inside; but quickly
+withdrew it.
+
+"Smells like a bus on a wet day," he muttered.
+
+With an air of decision Mrs. Bindle entered the tent. As she did so
+Bindle winked gravely at a little boy who had wandered up, and now stood
+awaiting events with blue-eyed gravity. At Bindle's wink he turned and
+trotted off to a neighbouring tent, from the shelter of which he
+continued to watch the domestic tragedy of the new arrivals.
+
+"There are no bedsteads." Mrs. Bindle's voice came from within the tent
+in tones of muffled tragedy.
+
+"You don't say so," said Bindle abstractedly, his attention concentrated
+upon a diminutive knight of the pole, who was approaching their tent.
+
+"Where's the feather beds, 'Orace?" he demanded when the lad was within
+ear-shot.
+
+"There's a waterproof ground-sheet and we supply mattresses of loose
+straw," he announced as he halted sharply within two paces of where
+Bindle stood.
+
+"Oh! you do, do you?" said Bindle, "an' who 'appens to supply the brass
+double-bedstead wot me and Mrs. B. is used to sleep on. P'raps you can
+tell me that, young shaver?"
+
+Before the lad had time to reply, Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance
+of the tent, grimmer and more uncompromising than ever. For a moment she
+eyed the lad severely.
+
+"Where am I to sleep?" she demanded.
+
+"Are you with this gentleman?" enquired the boy scout.
+
+"She is, sonny," said Bindle, "been with me for twenty years now. Can't
+lose 'er no'ow."
+
+"Bindle, behave yourself!" Mrs. Bindle's jaws closed with a snap.
+
+"We're going to 'ave some sacks of straw in place of that missionary's
+bed you an' me sleeps on in Fulham," explained Bindle; but Mrs. Bindle
+had disappeared once more into the tent.
+
+For the next hour the Bindles and their assistant scout were engaged in
+getting the bell-tent into habitable condition. During the process the
+scout explained that the marquee was to have been used for the communal
+meals, which the field-kitchen was to supply; but both had failed to
+arrive, and the bishop had himself gone up to London to make enquiries.
+
+"An' wot's goin' to 'appen to us till 'e runs acrost 'em?" enquired
+Bindle. "I'm feelin' a bit peckish myself now--wot I'll be like in a
+hour's time I don't know."
+
+"I'll show you how to build a scout-fire," volunteered the lad.
+
+"But I ain't a fire-eater," objected Bindle. "I want a bit o' steak, or
+a rasher an' an egg."
+
+"What's the use of a scout-fire to me with kippers to cook?" demanded
+Mrs. Bindle, appearing once more at the entrance of the tent.
+
+At that moment another "tired worker" drifted across to the Bindles'
+tent. He was a long, lean man with a straggling moustache and three
+days' growth of beard. He was in his shirt sleeves, collarless, with
+unbuttoned waistcoat, and he wore a general air of despondency and
+gloom.
+
+"'Ow goes it, mate?" he enquired.
+
+Bindle straightened himself from inspecting the interior of the tin-bath
+which he was unpacking.
+
+"Oh! mid; but I've known wot it is to be 'appier," said Bindle, with a
+grin.
+
+"Same 'ere," was the gloomy response.
+
+"Things sort o' seem to 'ave gone wrong," suggested Bindle
+conversationally.
+
+"That's right," said the man, rubbing the bristles of his chin with a
+meditative thumb.
+
+"'Ow you gettin' on for grub?" asked Bindle.
+
+The man shook his head lugubriously.
+
+"What about a pub?"
+
+"Mile away," gloomed the man.
+
+"Gawd Almighty!" Bindle's exclamation was not concerned with the man's
+remark, but with something he extracted from the bath. "Well, I'm
+blowed," he muttered.
+
+"'Ere, Lizzie," he called out.
+
+Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent. Bindle held up an
+elastic-sided boot from which marmalade fell solemnly and reluctantly.
+
+Then the flood-gates of Mrs. Bindle's wrath burst apart, and she poured
+down upon Bindle's head a deluge of reproach. He and he alone was
+responsible for all the disasters that had befallen them. He had done it
+on purpose because she wanted a holiday. He wasn't a husband, he was a
+blasphemer, an atheist, a cumberer of the earth, and all that was evil.
+
+She was interrupted in her tirade by the approach of a little man with a
+round, bald, shiny head and a worried expression of countenance.
+
+"D'yer know 'ow to milk a cow, mate?" he enquired of Bindle, apparently
+quite unconscious that he had precipitated himself into the midst of a
+domestic scene.
+
+"Do I know 'ow to wot?" demanded Bindle, eyeing the man as if he had
+asked a most unusual question.
+
+"There's a bloomin' cow over there and nobody can't milk 'er, an' the
+bishop's gone, and we wants our tea."
+
+Bindle scratched his head through his cap, then, turning towards the
+tent into which Mrs. Bindle had once more disappeared, he called out:
+
+"Hi, Lizzie, jer know 'ow to milk a cow?"
+
+"Don't be beastly," came the reply from the tent.
+
+"It ain't one of them cows," he called back, "it's a milk cow, an'
+'ere's a cove wot wants 'is tea."
+
+Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent, and surveyed the group
+of three men.
+
+"How did you manage yesterday?" she demanded practically.
+
+"A girl come over from the farm, missis," said the little man, "and she
+didn't 'arf make it milk."
+
+"Hold your tongue," snapped Mrs. Bindle.
+
+The man gazed at her in surprise.
+
+"Why don't you get the same girl?" asked Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"She says she's too busy. I 'ad a try myself," said the man, "only it
+was a washout."
+
+"I'll 'ave a look at 'er," Bindle announced, and the three men moved off
+across the meadow, picking their way among the tents with their piles of
+bedding, blankets, and other impedimenta outside. All were getting ready
+for the night.
+
+When Bindle reached Daisy, he found the problem had been solved by one
+of Mr. Timkins' farm-hands, who was busily at work, watched by an
+interested group of campers.
+
+During the next half-hour, Bindle strolled about among the tents
+learning many things, foremost among which was that "the whole ruddy
+camp was a washout." The commissariat had failed badly, and the nearest
+drink was a mile away at The Trowel and Turtle. A great many things were
+said about the bishop and the organisers of the camp.
+
+When he returned to the tent, he found Mrs. Bindle engaged in boiling
+water in a petrol-tin over a scout-fire. With the providence of a good
+housewife she had brought with her emergency supplies, and Bindle was
+soon enjoying a meal comprised of kipper, tea and bread and margarine.
+When he had finished, he announced himself ready to face the terrors of
+the night.
+
+"I can't say as I likes it," he remarked, as he stood at the entrance to
+the tent, struggling to undo his collar. "Seems to me sort o' draughty."
+
+"That's right, go on," cried Mrs. Bindle, as she pushed past him. "What
+did you expect?"
+
+"Well, since you asks me, I'm like those coves in religion wot expects
+nothink; but gets an 'ell of a lot."
+
+"Don't blaspheme. It's Sunday to-morrow," was the rejoinder; but Bindle
+had strolled away to commune with the man with a stubbly chin and
+pessimistic soul.
+
+"Do yer sleep well, mate?" he enquired, conversationally.
+
+"Crikey! sleep is it? There ain't no blinkin' sleep in this 'ere ruddy
+camp."
+
+"Wot's up?" enquired Bindle.
+
+"Up!" was the lugubrious response. "Awake all last night, I was."
+
+"Wot was you doin'?" queried Bindle with interest.
+
+"Scratchin'!" was the savage retort.
+
+"Scratchin'! Who was you scratchin'?"
+
+"Who was I scratchin'? Who the 'ell should I be scratchin' but myself?"
+he demanded, his apathy momentarily falling from him. "I'd like to know
+where they got that blinkin' straw from wot they give us to lie on. I
+done a bit o' scratchin' in the trenches; but last night I 'adn't enough
+fingers, damn 'em."
+
+Bindle whistled.
+
+"Then," continued the man with gloomy gusto, "there's them ruddy
+chickens in the mornin', a-crowin' their guts out. Not a wink o' sleep
+after three for anybody," he added, with all the hatred of the cockney
+for farmyard sounds. "Oh! it's an 'oliday, all right," he added with
+scathing sarcasm, "only it ain't ours."
+
+"Seems like it," said Bindle drily, as he turned on his heel and made
+for his own tent.
+
+That night, he realised to the full the iniquities of the man who had
+supplied the straw for the mattresses. By the sounds that came from the
+other side of the tent-pole, he gathered that Mrs. Bindle was similarly
+troubled.
+
+Towards dawn, Bindle began to doze, just as the cocks were announcing
+the coming of the sun. If the man with the stubbly chin were right in
+his diagnosis, the birds, like Prometheus, had, during the night,
+renewed their missing organisms.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle. "Ole six-foot-o'-melancholy wasn't
+swinging the lead neither. 'Oly ointment! I never 'eard such a row in
+all my puff. There ain't no doubt but wot Mrs. Bindle's gettin' a
+country 'oliday," and with that he rose and proceeded to draw on his
+trousers, deciding that it was folly to attempt further to seek sleep.
+
+Outside the tent, he came across Patrol-leader Smithers.
+
+"Mornin' Foch," said Bindle.
+
+"Smithers," said the lad. "Patrol-leader Smithers of the Bear Patrol."
+
+"My mistake," said Bindle; "but you an' Foch is jest as like as two
+peas. You don't 'appen to 'ave seen a stray cock about, do you?"
+
+"A cock," repeated the boy.
+
+"Yes!" said Bindle, tilting his head on one side with the air of one
+listening intently, whilst from all sides came the brazen blare of
+ecstatic chanticleers. "I thought I 'eard one just now."
+
+"They're Farmer Timkins' fowls," said Patrol-leader Smithers gravely.
+
+"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Seem to be in good song this mornin'.
+Reg'lar bunch o' canaries."
+
+To this flippancy, Patrol-leader Smithers made no response.
+
+"Does there 'appen to be any place where I can get a rinse, 'Indenberg?"
+he enquired.
+
+"There's a tap over there for men," said Patrol-leader Smithers,
+pointing to the extreme right of the field, "and for ladies over there,"
+he pointed in the opposite direction.
+
+"No mixed bathin', I see," murmured Bindle. "Now, as man to man,
+Ludendorff, which would you advise?"
+
+The lad looked at him with grave eyes. "The men's tap is over there,"
+and again he pointed.
+
+"Well, well," said Bindle, "p'raps you're right; but I ain't fond o'
+takin' a bath in the middle of a field," he muttered.
+
+"The taps are screened off."
+
+"Well, well, live an' learn," muttered Bindle, as he made for the men's
+tap.
+
+When Bindle returned to the tent, he found Patrol-leader Smithers
+instructing Mrs. Bindle in how to coax a scout-fire into activity.
+
+"You mustn't poke it, mum," said the lad. "It goes out if you do."
+
+Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips, and folded the brown mackintosh she was
+wearing more closely about her. She was not accustomed to criticism,
+particularly in domestic matters, and her instinct was to disregard it;
+but the boy's earnestness seemed to discourage retort, and she had
+already seen the evil effect of attacking a scout-fire with a poker.
+
+Suddenly her eye fell upon Bindle, standing in shirt and trousers, from
+the back of which his braces dangled despondently.
+
+"Why don't you go in and dress?" she demanded. "Walking about in that
+state!"
+
+"I been to get a rinse," he explained, as he walked across to the tent
+and disappeared through the aperture.
+
+Mrs. Bindle snorted angrily. She had experienced a bad night, added to
+which the fire had resented her onslaught by incontinently going out,
+necessitating an appeal to a mere child.
+
+Having assumed a collar, a coat and waistcoat, Bindle strolled round
+the camp exchanging a word here and a word there with his fellow
+campers, who, in an atmosphere of intense profanity, were engaged in
+getting breakfast.
+
+"Never 'eard such language," muttered Bindle with a grin. "This 'ere
+little camp'll send a rare lot o' people to a place where they won't
+meet the bishop."
+
+At the end of half-an-hour he returned and found tea, eggs and bacon,
+and Mrs. Bindle waiting for him.
+
+"So you've come at last," she snapped, as he seated himself on a wooden
+box.
+
+"Got it this time," he replied genially, sniffing the air
+appreciatively. "'Ope you got somethink nice for yer little love-bird."
+
+"Don't you love-bird me," cried Mrs. Bindle, who had been looking for
+some one on whom to vent her displeasure. "I suppose you're going to
+leave me to do all the work while you go gallivanting about playing the
+gentleman."
+
+"I don't needs to play it, Mrs. B., I'm IT. Vere de Vere with blood as
+blue as 'Earty's stories."
+
+"If you think I'm going to moil and toil and cook for you down here as I
+do at home, you're mistaken. I came for a rest. I've hardly had a wink
+of sleep all night," she sniffed ominously.
+
+"I thought I 'eard you on the 'unt," said Bindle sympathetically.
+
+"Bindle!" There was warning in her tone.
+
+"But wasn't you?" He looked across at her in surprise, his mouth full of
+eggs and bacon.
+
+"I--I had a disturbed night," she drew in her lips primly.
+
+"So did I," said Bindle gloomily. "I'd 'ave disturbed 'em if I could
+'ave caught 'em. My God! There must 'ave been millions of 'em," he added
+reminiscently.
+
+"If you're going to talk like that, I shall go away," she announced.
+
+"I'd like to meet the cove wot filled them mattresses," was Bindle's
+sinister comment.
+
+"It--it wasn't that," said Mrs. Bindle. "It was the----" She paused for
+a moment.
+
+"Them cocks," he suggested.
+
+"Don't be disgusting, Bindle."
+
+"Disgusting? I never see such a chap as me for bein' lood an' disgustin'
+an' blasphemious. Wot jer call 'em if they ain't cocks?"
+
+"They're roosters--the male birds."
+
+"But they wasn't roostin', blow 'em. They was crowin', like giddy-o."
+
+Mrs. Bindle made no comment; but continued to eat her breakfast.
+
+"Personally, myself, I'm goin' to 'ave a little word with the bishop
+about that little game I 'ad with wot 'appened before wot you call them
+male birds started givin' tongue." He paused to take breath. "I don't
+like to mention wot it was; but I shall itch for a month. 'Ullo Weary!"
+he called out to the long man with the stubbly chin.
+
+The man approached. He was wearing the same lugubrious look and the same
+waistcoat, unbuttoned in just the same manner that it had been
+unbuttoned the day before.
+
+"You was right about them mattresses and the male birds," said Bindle,
+with a glance at Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"The wot?" demanded the man, gazing vacantly at Bindle.
+
+"The male birds."
+
+"'Oo the 'ell--sorry, mum," to Mrs. Bindle. Then turning once more to
+Bindle he added, "Them cocks, you mean?"
+
+"'Ush!" said Bindle. "They ain't cocks 'ere, they're male birds, an'
+roosters on Sunday. You see, my missis----" but Mrs. Bindle had risen
+and, with angry eyes, had disappeared into the tent.
+
+"Got one of 'em?" queried Bindle, jerking his thumb in the direction of
+the aperture of the tent.
+
+The man with the stubbly chin nodded dolefully.
+
+"Thought so," said Bindle. "You looks it."
+
+Whilst Bindle was strolling round the camp with the man with the stubbly
+chin, Mrs. Bindle was becoming better acquainted with the peculiar
+temperament of a bell-tent. She had already realised its disadvantages
+as a dressing-room. It was dark, it was small, it was stuffy. The two
+mattresses occupied practically the whole floor-space and there was
+nowhere to sit. It was impossible to move about freely, owing to the
+restrictions of space in the upper area.
+
+Having washed the breakfast-things, peeled the potatoes, supplied by Mr.
+Timkins through Patrol-leader Smithers, and prepared for the oven a
+small joint of beef she had brought with her, Mrs. Bindle once more
+withdrew into the tent.
+
+When she eventually re-appeared in brown alpaca with a bonnet to match,
+upon which rested two purple pansies, Bindle had just returned from what
+he called "a nose round," during which he had made friends with most of
+the campers, men, women and children, who were not already his friends.
+
+At the sight of Mrs. Bindle he whistled softly.
+
+"You can show me where the bakers is," she said icily, as she proceeded
+to draw on a pair of brown kid gloves. The inconveniences arising from
+dressing in a bell-tent had sorely ruffled her temper.
+
+"The bakers!" he repeated stupidly.
+
+"Yes, the bakers," she repeated. "I suppose you don't want to eat your
+dinner raw."
+
+Then Bindle strove to explain the composite tragedy of the missing
+field-kitchen and marquee, to say nothing of the bishop.
+
+In small communities news travels quickly, and the Bindles soon found
+themselves the centre of a group of men and women (with children holding
+a watching brief), all anxious to volunteer information, mainly on the
+subject of misguided bishops who got unsuspecting townsmen into the
+country under false pretences.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was a good housewife, and she had come prepared with rations
+sufficient for the first two days. She had, however, depended upon the
+statements contained in the prospectus of the S.C.T.W., that cooking
+facilities would be provided by the committee.
+
+She strove to control the anger that was rising within her. It was the
+Sabbath, and she was among strangers.
+
+Although ready and willing to volunteer information, the other campers
+saw no reason to restrain their surprise and disapproval of Mrs.
+Bindle's toilette. The other women were in their work-a-day attire, as
+befitted housewives who had dinners to cook under severe handicaps, and
+they resented what they regarded as a newcomer's "swank."
+
+That first day of the holiday, for which she had fought with such grim
+determination, lived long in Mrs. Bindle's memory. Dinner she contrived
+with the aid of the frying-pan and the saucepan she had brought with
+her. It would have taken something more than the absence of a
+field-kitchen to prevent Mrs. Bindle from doing what she regarded as her
+domestic duty.
+
+The full sense of her tragedy, however, manifested itself when, dinner
+over, she had washed-up.
+
+There was nothing to do until tea-time. Bindle had disappeared with the
+man with the stubbly chin and two others in search of the nearest
+public-house, a mile away. Patrol-leader Smithers was at Sunday-school,
+whilst her fellow-campers showed no inclination to make advances.
+
+She walked for a little among the other tents; but her general demeanour
+was not conducive to hasty friendships. She therefore returned to the
+tent and wrote to Mr. Hearty, telling him, on the authority of
+Patrol-leader Smithers, that Mr. Timkins had a large quantity of
+excellent strawberries for sale.
+
+Mr. Hearty was a greengrocer who had one eye on business and the other
+eye on God, in case of accidents. On hearing that the Bindles were going
+into the country, his mind had instinctively flown to fruit and
+vegetables. He had asked Mrs. Bindle to "drop him a postcard" (Mr.
+Hearty was always economical in the matter of postages, even other
+people's postages) if she heard of anything that she thought might
+interest him.
+
+Mrs. Bindle told in glowing terms the story of Farmer Timkins' hoards of
+strawberries, giving the impression that he was at a loss what to do
+with them.
+
+Three o'clock brought the bishop and a short open-air service, which was
+attended by the entire band of campers, with the exception of Bindle and
+his companions.
+
+The bishop was full of apologies for the past and hope for the future.
+In place of a sermon he gave an almost jovial address; but there were no
+answering smiles. Everyone was wondering what they could do until it was
+time for bed, the more imaginative going still further and speculating
+what they were to do when they got there.
+
+"My friends," the bishop concluded, "we must not allow trifling mishaps
+to discourage us. We are here to enjoy ourselves."
+
+And the campers returned to their tents as Achilles had done a few
+thousand years before, dark of brow and gloomy of heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MR. HEARTY ENCOUNTERS A BULL
+
+
+I
+
+"He's sure to lose his way across the fields," cried Mrs. Bindle
+angrily.
+
+"'Earty's too careful to lose anythink," said Bindle, as, from a small
+tin box, he crammed tobacco into his pipe. "'E's used to the narrow way
+'e is," he added.
+
+"You ought to have gone to meet him."
+
+"My legs is feelin' a bit tired----" began Bindle, who enjoyed his
+brother-in-law's society only when there were others to enjoy it with
+him.
+
+"Bother your legs," she snapped.
+
+"Supposin' you 'ad various veins in your legs."
+
+"Don't be nasty."
+
+"Well, wot jer want to talk about my legs for, if I mustn't talk about
+yours," he grumbled.
+
+"You've got a lewd mind, Bindle," she retorted, "and you know it."
+
+"Well, any'ow, I ain't got lood legs."
+
+She drew in her lips; but said nothing.
+
+"I don't know wot 'Earty wants to come down to a funny little 'ole like
+this for," grumbled Bindle, as they walked across the meadow adjoining
+the camping-ground, making for a spot that would give them a view of the
+field-path leading to the station.
+
+"It's because he wants to buy some fruit."
+
+"I thought there was somethink at the back of the old bird's mind," he
+remarked. "'Earty ain't one to spend railway fares jest for the love o'
+seein' you an' me, Mrs. B. It's apples 'es after--reg'lar old Adam 'e
+is. You only got to watch 'im with them gals in the choir."
+
+"If you talk like that I shall leave you," she cried angrily; "and it's
+strawberries, apples aren't in yet," she added, as if that were a
+circumstance in Mr. Hearty's favour.
+
+Mr. Hearty had proved himself to be a man of action. Mrs. Bindle's
+glowing account of vast stores of strawberries, to be had almost for the
+asking, had torn from him a telegram announcing that he would be at the
+Summer-Camp for Tired Workers soon after two o'clock that, Monday,
+afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was almost genial at the prospect of seeing her
+brother-in-law, and earning his thanks for assistance rendered.
+Conditions at the camp remained unchanged. After the service on the
+previous day, the bishop had once more disappeared, ostensibly in
+pursuit of the errant field-kitchen and marquee, promising to return
+early the following afternoon.
+
+Arrived at the gate on the further side of the field, Bindle paused.
+Then, as Mrs. Bindle refused his suggestion that he should "'oist" her
+up, he himself climbed on to the top-rail and sat contentedly smoking.
+
+"I don't seem to see 'Earty a-walkin' across a field," he remarked
+meditatively. "It don't seem natural."
+
+"You can't see anything but what's in your own wicked mind," she
+retorted acidly.
+
+"Well, well!" he said philosophically. "P'raps you're right. I suppose
+we shall see them merry whiskers of 'is a-comin' round the corner, 'im
+a-leadin' a lamb with a pink ribbon. I can see 'Earty with a little
+lamb, an' a sprig o' mint for the sauce."
+
+For nearly a quarter of an hour Bindle smoked in silence, whilst Mrs.
+Bindle stood with eyes fixed upon a stile on the opposite side of the
+field, over which Mr. Hearty was due to come.
+
+"What was that?"
+
+Involuntarily she clutched Bindle's knee, as a tremendous roar broke the
+stillness of the summer afternoon.
+
+"That's ole Farmer Timkins' bull," explained Bindle. "Rare ole sport, 'e
+is. Tossed a cove last week, an' made a rare mess of 'im."
+
+"It oughtn't to be allowed."
+
+"Wot?"
+
+"Dangerous animals like that," was the retort.
+
+"Well, personally myself, I likes a cut o' veal," Bindle remarked,
+watching Mrs. Bindle covertly; but her thoughts were intent on Mr.
+Hearty, and the allusion passed unnoticed.
+
+"It 'ud be a bad thing for ole 'Earty, if that bull was to get 'im by
+the back o' the trousers," mused Bindle. "'Ullo, there 'e is." He
+indicated with the stem of his pipe a point in the hedge on the right
+of the field, over which was thrust a great dun-coloured head.
+
+Again the terrifying roar split the air. Instinctively Mrs. Bindle
+recoiled, and gripped the parrot-headed umbrella she was carrying.
+
+"It's trying to get through. I'm not going to wait here," she announced
+with decision. "It may----"
+
+"Don't you worry, Mrs. B.," he reassured her. "'E ain't one o' the
+jumpin' sort. Besides, there's an 'edge between 'im an' us, not to speak
+o' this 'ere gate."
+
+Mrs. Bindle retired a yard or two, her eyes still on the dun-coloured
+head.
+
+So absorbed were she and Bindle in watching the bull, that neither of
+them saw Mr. Hearty climbing the opposite stile.
+
+As he stood on the topmost step, silhouetted against the blue sky, the
+tails of his frock-coat flapping, Bindle caught sight of him.
+
+"'Ullo, 'ere's old 'Earty!" he cried, waving his hand.
+
+Mr. Hearty descended gingerly to terra firma, then, seeing Mrs. Bindle,
+he raised his semi-clerical felt hat. In such matters, Mr. Hearty was
+extremely punctilious.
+
+At that moment the bull appeared to catch sight of the figure with the
+flapping coat-tails.
+
+It made a tremendous onslaught upon the hedge, and there was a sound of
+crackling branches; but the hedge held.
+
+"Call out to him, Bindle. Shout! Warn him! Do you hear?" cried Mrs.
+Bindle excitedly.
+
+"'E's all right," said Bindle complacently. "That there bull ain't
+a-goin' to get through an 'edge like that."
+
+"Mr. Hearty, there's a bull! Run!"
+
+Mrs. Bindle's thin voice entirely failed to carry to where Mr. Hearty
+was walking with dignity and unconcern, regardless of the danger which
+Mrs. Bindle foresaw threatened him.
+
+The bull made another attack upon the hedge. Mr. Hearty's flapping
+coat-tails seemed to goad it to madness. There was a further crackling
+and the massive shoulders of the animal now became visible; but still it
+was unable to break through.
+
+"Call out to him, Bindle. He'll be killed, and it'll be your fault," she
+cried hysterically, pale and trembling with anxiety.
+
+"Look out, 'Earty!" yelled Bindle. "There's a bloomin' bull," and he
+pointed in the direction of the hedge; but the bull had disappeared.
+
+Mr. Hearty looked towards the point indicated; but, seeing nothing,
+continued his dignified way, convinced that Bindle was once more
+indulging in what Mr. Hearty had been known to describe as "his untimely
+jests."
+
+He was within some fifty yards of the gate where the Bindles awaited
+him, when there was a terrific crash followed by a mighty roar--the bull
+was through. It had retreated apparently in order to charge the hedge
+and break through by virtue of its mighty bulk.
+
+Bindle yelled, Mrs. Bindle screamed, and Mr. Hearty gave one wild look
+over his shoulder and, with terror in his eyes and his semi-clerical hat
+streaming behind, attached only by a hat-guard, he ran as he had never
+run before.
+
+Bindle clambered down from the gate so as to leave the way clear, and
+Mrs. Bindle thrust her umbrella into Bindle's hands. She had always been
+told that no bull would charge an open umbrella.
+
+"Come on, 'Earty!" yelled Bindle. "Run like 'ell!" In his excitement he
+squatted down on his haunches, for all the world like a man encouraging
+a whippet.
+
+Mr. Hearty ran, and the bull, head down and with a snorting noise that
+struck terror to the heart of the fugitive, ran also.
+
+"Run, Mr. Hearty, run!" screamed Mrs. Bindle again.
+
+The bull was running diagonally in the direction of Mr. Hearty's fleeing
+figure. In this it was at a disadvantage.
+
+"Get ready to help him over," cried Mrs. Bindle, terror clutching at her
+heart.
+
+"Looks to me as if 'Earty and the bull and the whole bloomin'
+caboodle'll come over together," muttered Bindle.
+
+"Oooooh!"
+
+A new possibility seemed to strike Mrs. Bindle and, with a terrified
+look at the approaching bull, which at that moment gave utterance to a
+super-roar, she turned and fled for the gate on the opposite side of the
+field.
+
+For a second Bindle tore his gaze from the drama before him. He caught
+sight of several inches of white leg above a pair of elastic-sided
+boots, out of which dangled black and orange tabs.
+
+"Help, Joseph, help!" Mr. Hearty screamed in his terror and, a second
+later, he crashed against the gate on which Bindle had climbed ready to
+haul him over.
+
+Seizing his brother-in-law by the collar and a mercifully slack pair of
+trousers, he gave him a mighty heave. A moment later, the two fell to
+the ground; but on the right side of the gate. As they did so, the bull
+crashed his head against it.
+
+The whole structure shivered. For a moment Bindle gave himself up for
+lost; but, fortunately, the posts held. The enraged animal could do
+nothing more than thrust its muzzle between the bars of the gate and
+snort its fury.
+
+The foaming mouth and evil-looking blood-shot eyes caused Bindle to
+scramble hastily to his feet.
+
+"Oh God! I am a miserable sinner," wailed Mr. Hearty; "but spare me that
+I may repent." Then he fell to moaning, whilst Bindle caught a vision of
+Mrs. Bindle disappearing over the further gate with a startling exposure
+of white stocking.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "Ain't it funny 'ow religion gets into
+the legs when there's a bull about? Bit of a slump in 'arps, if you was
+to ask me!"
+
+For some seconds he stood gazing down on the grovelling form of Mr.
+Hearty, an anxious eye on the bull which, with angry snorts, was
+battering the gate in a manner that caused him some concern.
+
+"Look 'ere, 'Earty, you'd better nip orf," he said at length, bringing
+his boot gently into contact with a prominent portion of the
+greengrocer's prostrate form. Mr. Hearty merely groaned and muttered
+appeals to the Almighty to save him.
+
+"It ain't no use a-kickin' up all that row," Bindle continued. "This
+'ere bit o' beef seems to 'ave taken a fancy to you, 'Earty, an' that
+there gate ain't none too strong, neither. 'Ere, steady Kayser," he
+admonished, as the bull made a vicious dash with its head against the
+gate.
+
+Mr. Hearty sat up and gave a wild look about him. At the sight of the
+blood-shot eyes of the enraged animal he scrambled to his feet.
+
+"Now you make a bolt for that there stile," said Bindle, jerking his
+thumb in the direction where Mrs. Bindle had just disappeared, "and
+you'll find Mrs. B. somewhere on the other side."
+
+With another apprehensive glance at the bull, Mr. Hearty turned and made
+towards the stile. His pace was strangely suggestive of a man cheating
+in a walking-race.
+
+The sight of his quarry escaping seemed still further to enrage the
+bull. With a terrifying roar it dashed furiously at the gate.
+
+The sound of the roar lent wings to the feet of the flying Mr. Hearty.
+Throwing aside all pretence, he made precipitately towards the stile,
+beyond which lay safety. For a few seconds, Bindle stood watching the
+flying figure of his brother-in-law. Then he turned off to the right,
+along the hedge dividing the meadow from the field occupied by the bull.
+
+"Well, 'ere's victory or Westminster Abbey," he muttered as he crept
+through a hole in the hawthorn, hoping that the bull would not observe
+him. His object was to warn the farmer of the animal's escape.
+
+Half an hour later, he climbed the stile over which Mrs. Bindle had
+disappeared; but there was no sign either of her or of Mr. Hearty.
+
+It was not until he reached the Summer-Camp that he found them seated
+outside the Bindles' tent. Mr. Hearty, looking pasty of feature, was
+endeavouring to convey to his blanched lips a cup of tea that Mrs.
+Bindle had just handed to him; but the trembling of his hand caused it
+to slop over the side of the cup on to his trousers.
+
+"'Ullo, 'ere we are again," cried Bindle cheerily.
+
+"I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself," cried Mrs. Bindle.
+
+Bindle stared at her with a puzzled expression. He looked at Mr. Hearty,
+then back again at Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Leaving Mr. Hearty and me like that. We might have been killed." Her
+voice shook.
+
+"That would 'ave been a short cut to 'arps an' wings."
+
+"I'm ashamed of you, that I am," she continued, while Mr. Hearty turned
+upon his brother-in-law a pair of mildly reproachful eyes.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," muttered Bindle as he walked away. "If them two
+ain't IT. _Me_ a-leavin' _them_. If that ain't a juicy bit."
+
+Mr. Hearty was only half-way through his second cup of tea when the
+Bishop of Fulham, followed by several of the summer-campers, appeared
+and walked briskly towards them.
+
+"Where's that husband of yours, Mrs. Bindle?" he enquired, as if he
+suspected Bindle of hiding from him.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, sir," she cried, rising, whilst Mr. Hearty, in
+following suit, stepped upon the tails of his coat and slopped the rest
+of the tea over his trousers.
+
+"Ah," said the bishop. "I must find him. He's a fine fellow, crossing
+the field behind that bull to warn Mr. Timkins. If the beast had
+happened to get into the camp, it would have been the very--very
+disastrous," he corrected himself, and with a nod he passed on followed
+by the other campers.
+
+"That's just like Bindle," she complained, "not saying a word, and
+making me ridiculous before the bishop. He's always treating me like
+that," and there was a whimper in her voice.
+
+"It's--it's very unfortunate," said Mr. Hearty nervously.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hearty," she said. "It's little enough sympathy I get."
+
+
+II
+
+It was not until nearly four o'clock that Bindle re-appeared with the
+intimation that he was ready to conduct Mr. Hearty to call upon Farmer
+Timkins with regard to the strawberries, the purchase of which had been
+the object of Mr. Hearty's visit.
+
+"Won't you come, too, Elizabeth?" enquired Mr. Hearty, turning to Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hearty, I should like to," she replied, tightening her
+bonnet strings as if in anticipation of further violent movement.
+
+Mr. Hearty gave the invitation more as a precaution against Bindle's
+high-spirits, than from a desire for his sister-in-law's company.
+
+"'Ere, not that way," cried Bindle, as they were making for the gate
+leading to the road.
+
+Mr. Hearty looked hesitatingly at Mrs. Bindle, who, however, settled the
+question by marching resolutely towards the gate.
+
+"But it'll take a quarter of an hour that way," Bindle protested.
+
+"If you think I'm going across any more fields with wild bulls, Bindle,
+you're mistaken," she announced with decision. "You've nearly killed Mr.
+Hearty once to-day. Let that be enough."
+
+With a feeling of thankfulness Mr. Hearty followed.
+
+"But that little bit o' beef is tied up with a ring through 'is
+bloomin' nose. I been an' 'ad a look at 'im."
+
+"Ring or no ring," she snapped, "I'll have you know that I'm not going
+across any more fields. It's a mercy we're either of us alive."
+
+Bindle knew that he was not the other one referred to, and he
+reluctantly followed, grumbling about long distances and various veins.
+
+Although upon the high-road, both Mrs. Bindle and Mr. Hearty were what
+Bindle regarded as "a bit jumpy."
+
+From time to time they looked about them with obvious apprehension, as
+if anticipating that from every point of the compass a bull was
+preparing to charge down upon them.
+
+They paused at the main-entrance to the farm, allowing Bindle to lead
+the way.
+
+Half-way towards the house, their nostrils were assailed by a
+devastating smell; Mr. Hearty held his breath, whilst Mrs. Bindle
+produced a handkerchief, wiped her lips and then held it to her nose.
+She had always been given to understand that the only antidote for a bad
+smell was to spit; but she was too refined to act up to the dictum
+without the aid of her handkerchief.
+
+"Pigs!" remarked Bindle, raising his head and sniffing with the air of a
+connoisseur.
+
+"Extremely insanitary," murmured Mr. Hearty. "You did say the--er bull
+was tied up, Joseph?" he enquired.
+
+"Well, 'e was when I see 'im," said Bindle, "but of course it wouldn't
+take long for 'im to undo 'imself."
+
+Mr. Hearty glanced about him anxiously.
+
+In front of the house the party paused. Nowhere was anyone to be seen.
+An old cart with its shafts pointing heavenward stood on the borders of
+a duck pond, green with slime.
+
+The place was muddy and unclean, and Mrs. Bindle, with a look of
+disgust, drew up her skirts almost to the tops of her elastic-sided
+boots.
+
+Bindle looked about him with interest. A hen appeared round the corner
+of the house, gazed at the newcomers for a few seconds, her head on one
+side, then disappeared from whence she had come.
+
+Ducks stood on their heads in the water, or quacked comfortably as they
+swam about, apparently either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that
+there were callers.
+
+From somewhere in the distance could be heard the sound of a horse
+stamping in its stall.
+
+At the end of five minutes an old man appeared carrying a pail. At the
+sight of strangers, he stopped dead, his slobbering lips gaping in
+surprise.
+
+"Can I see Mr. Timkins?" enquired Mr. Hearty, in refined but woolly
+tones.
+
+"Farmer be over there wi' Bessie. I tell un she'll foal' fore night; but
+'e will 'ave it she won't. 'E'll see. 'E will," he added with the air of
+a fatalist.
+
+Mr. Hearty turned aside and became interested in the ducks, whilst Mrs.
+Bindle flushed a deep vermilion. Bindle said nothing; but watched with
+enjoyment the confusion of the others.
+
+The man stared at them, puzzled to account for their conduct.
+
+"Where did you say Mr. Timkins was to be found?" enquired Mr. Hearty.
+
+"I just tell ee, in the stable wi' Bessie. 'E says she won't foal; but I
+know she will. Why she----"
+
+Mr. Hearty did not wait for further information; but turned and made for
+what, from the motion of the man's head, he took to be the stable.
+
+The others followed.
+
+"No, not there," yelled the man, as if he were addressing someone in the
+next field. "Turn round to left o' that there muck 'eap."
+
+A convulsive shudder passed over Mr. Hearty's frame. He was appalled at
+the coarseness engendered by an agricultural existence. He hurried on so
+that he should not have to meet Mrs. Bindle's eye.
+
+At that moment Farmer Timkins was seen approaching. He was a short,
+red-faced man in a bob-tailed coat with large flapped-pockets,
+riding-breeches and gaiters. In his hand he carried a crop which, at the
+sight of Mrs. Bindle, he raised to his hat in salutation.
+
+"Mornin'."
+
+"Good afternoon," said Mr. Hearty genteelly.
+
+The farmer fixed his eyes upon Mr. Hearty's emaciated sallowness, with
+all the superiority of one who knows that he is a fine figure of a man.
+
+"It was you that upset Oscar, wasn't it?" There was more accusation than
+welcome in his tone.
+
+"Upset Oscar?" enquired Mr. Hearty, nervously looking from the farmer
+to Mrs. Bindle, then back again to the farmer.
+
+"Yes, my bull," explained Mr. Timkins.
+
+"It was Oscar wot nearly upset pore old 'Earty," grinned Bindle.
+
+"A savage beast like that ought to be shot," cried Mrs. Bindle, gazing
+squarely at the farmer. "It nearly killed----"
+
+"Ought to be shot!" repeated the farmer, a dull flush rising to his
+face. "Shoot Oscar! Are you mad, ma'am?" he demanded, making an obvious
+effort to restrain his anger.
+
+"Don't you dare to insult me," she cried. "You set that savage brute on
+to Mr. Hearty and it nearly killed him. I shall report you to the
+bishop--and--and--to the police," she added as an after-thought. "You
+ought to be prosecuted."
+
+Mrs. Bindle's lips had disappeared into a grey line, her face was very
+white, particularly at the corners of the mouth. For nearly two hours
+she had restrained herself. Now that she was face to face with the owner
+of the bull that had nearly plunged her into mourning, her anger burst
+forth.
+
+The farmer looked from one to the other in bewilderment.
+
+"Report me to the police," he repeated dully. "What----"
+
+"Yes, and I will too," cried Mrs. Bindle, interpreting the farmer's
+strangeness of manner as indicative of fear. "Mad bulls are always
+shot."
+
+The farmer focussed his gaze upon Mrs. Bindle, as if she belonged to a
+new species. His anger had vanished. He was overcome by surprise that
+anyone should be so ignorant of bulls and their ways as to believe Oscar
+mad.
+
+"Why, ma'am, Oscar's no more mad than you or me. He's just a bit fresh.
+Most times he's as gentle as a lamb."
+
+"Don't talk to me about lambs," cried Mrs. Bindle, now thoroughly
+roused. "With my own eyes I saw it chasing Mr. Hearty across the field.
+It's a wonder he wasn't killed. I shall insist upon the animal being
+destroyed."
+
+The farmer turned to Bindle, as if for an explanation of such strange
+views upon bulls in general and Oscar in particular.
+
+"Oscar's all right, Lizzie," said Bindle pacifically. "'E only wanted to
+play tag with 'Earty."
+
+"You be quiet!" cried Mrs. Bindle. She felt that she already had the
+enemy well beaten and in terror of prosecution.
+
+"I suppose," she continued, turning once more to Mr. Timkins, "you want
+to hide the fact that you're keeping a mad bull until you can turn it
+into beef and send it to market; but----"
+
+"Turn Oscar into beef!" roared the farmer. "Why, God dang my boots,
+ma'am, you're crazy! I wouldn't sell Oscar for a thousand pounds."
+
+"I thought so," said Mrs. Bindle, looking across at Mr. Hearty, who was
+feeling intensely uncomfortable, "and people are to be chased about the
+country and murdered just because you won't----"
+
+"But dang it, ma'am! there isn't a bull like Oscar for twenty miles
+round. Last year I had--let me see, how many calves----"
+
+"Don't be disgusting," she cried, whilst Mr. Hearty turned his head
+aside, and coughed modestly into his right hand.
+
+Mr. Timkins gazed from one to the other in sheer amazement, whilst
+Bindle, who had so manoeuvred as to place himself behind Mrs. Bindle,
+caught the farmer's eye and tapped his forehead significantly.
+
+The simple action seemed to have a magical effect upon Mr. Timkins. His
+anger disappeared and his customary bluff geniality returned.
+
+He acknowledged Bindle's signal with a wink, then he turned to Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"You see, ma'am, this is all my land, and I let the bishop have his
+camp----"
+
+"That doesn't excuse you for keeping a mad bull," was the uncompromising
+retort. The life of her hero had been endangered, and Mrs. Bindle was
+not to be placated by words.
+
+"But Oscar ain't mad," protested the farmer, taking off his hat and
+mopping his forehead with a large coloured-handkerchief he had drawn
+from his tail-pocket. "I tell you he's no more mad than what I am."
+
+"And I tell you he is," she retorted, with all the assurance of one
+thoroughly versed in the ways of bulls.
+
+"You see, it's like this here, mum," he said soothingly, intent upon
+placating one who was not "quite all there," as he would have expressed
+it. "It's all through the wind gettin' round to the sou'west. If it
+hadn't been for that----"
+
+"Don't talk to me about such rubbish," she interrupted scornfully. "I
+wonder you don't say it's because there's a new moon. I'm not a fool,
+although I haven't lived all my life on a farm."
+
+The farmer looked about him helplessly. Then he made another effort.
+
+"You see, ma'am, when the wind's in the sou'west, Oscar gets a whiff o'
+them cows in the home----"
+
+"How dare you!" The colour of Mrs. Bindle's cheeks transcended anything
+that Bindle had ever seen. "How dare you speak to me! How--you
+coarse--you--you disgusting beast!"
+
+At the sight of Mrs. Bindle's blazing eyes and heaving chest, the farmer
+involuntarily retreated a step.
+
+Several times he blinked his eyes in rapid succession.
+
+Mr. Hearty turned and concentrated his gaze upon what the old man had
+described as "that there muck 'eap."
+
+"Bindle!" cried Mrs. Bindle. "Will you stand by and let that man insult
+me? He's a coarse, low----" Her voice shook with suppressed passion. Mr.
+Hearty drew out his handkerchief and coughed into it.
+
+For several seconds Mrs. Bindle stood glaring at the farmer, then, with
+a sudden movement, she turned and walked away with short, jerky steps of
+indignation.
+
+Mr. Hearty continued to gaze at the muck heap, whilst the farmer watched
+the retreating form of Mrs. Bindle, as if she had been a double-headed
+calf, or a three-legged duck.
+
+When she had disappeared from sight round the corner of the house, he
+once more mopped his forehead with the coloured-handkerchief, then,
+thrusting it into his pocket, he resumed his hat with the air of a man
+who has escaped from some deadly peril.
+
+"It's all that there Jim," he muttered. "I told him to look out for the
+wind and move them cows; but will he? Not if he knows it, dang him."
+
+"Don't you take it to 'eart," said Bindle cheerily. "It ain't no good to
+start back-chat with my missis."
+
+"But she said Oscar ought to be shot," grumbled the farmer. "Shoot
+Oscar!" he muttered to himself.
+
+"You see, it's like this 'ere, religion's a funny thing. When it gets
+'old of you, it either makes you mild, like 'Earty 'ere, or it makes you
+as 'ot as onions, like my missis. She don't mean no 'arm; but when you
+gone 'ead first over a stile, an' your sort o' shy about yer legs, it
+don't make you feel you wants to give yer sugar ticket to the bull wot
+did it."
+
+"The--the strawberries, Joseph," Mr. Hearty broke in upon the
+conversation, addressing Bindle rather than the farmer, of whom he stood
+in some awe.
+
+"Ah! dang it, o' course, them strawberries," cried the farmer, who had
+been advised by Patrol-leader Smithers that a potential customer would
+call. "Come along this way," and he led the way to a large barn, still
+mumbling under his breath.
+
+"This way," he cried again, as he entered and pointed to where stood
+row upon row of baskets full of strawberries, heavily scenting the air.
+Hearty walked across the barn, picked up a specimen of the fruit and bit
+it.
+
+"What price are you asking for them?" he enquired.
+
+"Fourpence," was the retort.
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mr. Hearty with all the instincts of the chafferer,
+"that I could not pay more than----"
+
+"Then go to hell!" roared the farmer. "You get off my farm or--or I'll
+let Oscar loose," he added with inspiration.
+
+For the last quarter of an hour he had restrained himself with
+difficulty; but Mr. Hearty's bargaining instinct had been the spark that
+had ignited the volcano of his wrath.
+
+Mr. Hearty started back violently; stumbled against a large stone and
+sat down with a suddenness that caused his teeth to rattle.
+
+"Off you go!" yelled the farmer, purple with rage. "Here Jim," he
+shouted; but Mr. Hearty waited for nothing more. Picking himself up, he
+fled blindly, he knew not whither. It sufficed him that it should be
+away from that muscular arm which was gripping a formidable-looking
+crop.
+
+Bindle turned to follow, feeling that his own popularity had been
+submerged in the negative qualities of his wife and brother-in-law; but
+the farmer put out a restraining hand.
+
+"Not you," he said, "you come up to the house. I can give you a mug of
+ale the like of which you haven't tasted for years. I'm all upset, I
+am," he added, as if to excuse his outburst. "I'm not forgettin' that
+it was you that came an' told me about Oscar. He might a-done a
+middlin' bit o' damage." Then, suddenly recollecting the cause of all
+the trouble, he added, "Dang that old Jim! It was them cows what did it.
+Shoot Oscar!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE COMING OF THE WHIRLWIND
+
+
+I
+
+"It's come, mate."
+
+"Go away, we're not up yet," cried the voice of Mrs. Bindle from inside
+the tent.
+
+"It's come, mate," repeated a lugubrious voice, which Bindle recognised
+as that of the tall, despondent man with the stubbly chin.
+
+"Who's come?" demanded Bindle, sitting up and throwing the bedclothes
+from his chest, revealing a washed-out pink flannel night-shirt.
+
+"The blinkin' field-kitchen," came the voice from without. "Comin' to
+'ave a look at it?"
+
+"Righto, ole sport. I'll be out in two ticks."
+
+"I won't have that man coming up to the tent when--when we're not up,"
+said Mrs. Bindle angrily.
+
+"It's all right, Lizzie," reassured Bindle, "'e can't see through--an'
+'e ain't that sort o' cove neither," he added.
+
+Mrs. Bindle murmured an angry retort.
+
+Five minutes later Bindle, with trailing braces, left the tent and
+joined the group of men and children gazing at a battered object that
+was strangely reminiscent of Stevenson's first steam-engine.
+
+"That's it," said the man with the stubbly chin, whose name was Barnes,
+known to his intimates as "'Arry," turning to greet Bindle and jerking a
+dirt-grimed thumb in the direction of the travelling field-kitchen.
+
+Dubious heads were shaken. Many of the men had already had practical
+experience of the temperament possessed by an army field-kitchen.
+
+"At Givenchy I see one of 'em cut in 'alf by a 'Crump,'" muttered a
+little dark-haired man, with red-rimmed eyes that seemed to blink
+automatically. "It wasn't 'alf a sight, neither," he added.
+
+"Who's goin' to stoke?" demanded Barnes, rubbing his chin affectionately
+with the pad of his right thumb.
+
+"'Im wot's been the wickedest," suggested Bindle.
+
+They were in no mood for lightness, however. None had yet breakfasted,
+and all had suffered the acute inconvenience of camping under the
+supreme direction of a benign but misguided cleric.
+
+"Wot the 'ell I come 'ere for, I don't know," said a man with a moist,
+dirty face. "Might a gone to Southend with my brother-in-law, I might,"
+he added reminiscently.
+
+"You wasn't 'alf a mug, was you?" remarked a wiry little man in a
+singlet and khaki trousers.
+
+"You're right there, mate," was the response. "Blinkin' barmy I must a'
+been."
+
+"I was goin' to Yarmouth," confided a third, "only my missis got this
+ruddy camp on the streamin' brain. Jawed about it till I was sick and
+give in for peace an' quietness. Now, look at me."
+
+"It's all the ruddy Government, a-startin' these 'ere stutterin' camps,"
+complained a red-headed man with the face of a Bolshevist.
+
+"They 'as races at Yarmouth, too," grumbled the previous speaker.
+
+"Not till September," put in another.
+
+"August," said the first speaker aggressively, and the two proceeded
+fiercely to discuss the date of the Yarmouth Races.
+
+When the argument had gone as far as it could without blows, and had
+quieted all other conversation, Bindle slipped away from the group and
+returned to the tent to find Mrs. Bindle busy preparing breakfast.
+
+He smacked his lips with the consciousness that of all the campers he
+was the best fed.
+
+"Gettin' a move on," he cried cheerily, and once more he smacked his
+lips.
+
+"Pity you can't do something to help," she retorted, "instead of loafing
+about with that pack of lazy scamps."
+
+Bindle retired to the interior of the tent and proceeded with his
+toilet.
+
+"That's right, take no notice when I speak to you," she snapped.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" he groaned. "It's scratch all night an' scrap all day.
+It's an 'oliday all right."
+
+He strove to think of something tactful to say; but at the moment
+nothing seemed to suggest itself, and Mrs. Bindle viciously broke three
+eggs into the frying-pan in which bacon was already sizzling, like an
+energetic wireless-plant.
+
+The savoury smell of the frying eggs and bacon reached Bindle inside the
+tent, inspiring him with feelings of benevolence and good-will.
+
+"I'm sorry, Lizzie," he said contritely, "but I didn't 'ear you."
+
+"You heard well enough what I said," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder, as she
+broke a fourth egg into the pan.
+
+"The kitchen's come," he said pleasantly.
+
+"Oh, has it?" Mrs. Bindle did not raise her eyes from the frying-pan she
+was holding over the scout-fire.
+
+For a minute or two Bindle preserved silence, wondering what topic he
+possessed that would soothe her obvious irritation.
+
+"They say the big tent's down at the station," he remarked, repeating a
+rumour he had heard when engaged in examining the field-kitchen.
+
+Mrs. Bindle vouchsafed no reply.
+
+"Did you sleep well, Lizzie?" he enquired.
+
+"Sleep!" she repeated scornfully. "How was I to sleep on rough straw
+like that. I ache all over."
+
+He saw that he had made a false move in introducing the subject of
+sleep.
+
+"The milk hasn't come," she announced presently with the air of one
+making a statement she knew would be unpopular. Bindle hated tea
+without milk.
+
+"You don't say so," he remarked. "I must 'ave a word with Daisy. She
+didn't oughter be puttin' on 'er bloomin' frills."
+
+"The paraffin's got into the sugar," was the next bombshell.
+
+"Well, well," said Bindle. "I suppose you can't 'ave everythink as you
+would like it."
+
+"Another time, perhaps you'll get up yourself and help with the meals."
+
+"I ain't much at them sort o' things," he replied, conscious that Mrs.
+Bindle's anger was rising.
+
+"You leave me to do everything, as if I was your slave instead of your
+wife."
+
+Bindle remained silent. He realized that there were times when it was
+better to bow to the storm.
+
+"Ain't it done yet?" he enquired, looking anxiously at the frying-pan.
+
+"That's all you care about, your stomach," she cried, her voice rising
+hysterically. "So long as you've got plenty to eat, nothing else
+matters. I wonder I stand it. I--I----"
+
+Bindle's eyes were still fixed anxiously upon the frying-pan, which, in
+her excitement, Mrs. Bindle was moving from side to side of the fire.
+
+"Look out!" he cried, "you'll upset it, an' I'm as 'ungry as an 'awk."
+
+Suddenly the light of madness sprang into her eyes.
+
+"Oh! you are, are you? Well, get somebody else to cook your meals," and
+with that she inverted the frying-pan, tipping the contents into the
+fire. As Bindle sprang up from the box on which he had been sitting, she
+rubbed the frying-pan into the ashes, making a hideous mess of the
+burning-wood, eggs and bacon.
+
+With a scream that was half a sob, she fled to the shelter of the tent,
+leaving Bindle to gaze down upon the wreck of what had been intended for
+his breakfast.
+
+Picking up a stick, charred at one end, he began to rake among the
+embers in the vague hope of being able to disinter from the wreck
+something that was eatable; but Mrs. Bindle's action in rubbing the
+frying-pan into the ashes had removed from the contents all semblance of
+food. With a sigh he rose to his feet to find the bishop gazing down at
+him.
+
+"Had a mishap?" he asked pleasantly.
+
+"You've 'it it, sir," grinned Bindle. "Twenty years ago," he added in a
+whisper.
+
+"Twenty years ago!" murmured the bishop, a puzzled expression on his
+face. "What was twenty years ago?"
+
+"The little mis'ap wot you was talkin' about, sir," explained Bindle,
+still in a whisper. "I married Mrs. B. then, an' she gets a bit jumpy
+now and again."
+
+"I see," whispered the bishop, "she upset the breakfast."
+
+"Well, sir, you can put it that way; but personally myself, I think it
+was the breakfast wot upset 'er."
+
+"And you've got nothing to eat?"
+
+"Not even a tin to lick out, sir."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" cried the bishop, genuinely distressed, and then,
+suddenly catching sight of Barnes's lugubrious form appearing from
+behind a neighbouring tent, he hailed him.
+
+Barnes approached with all the deliberation and unconcern of a
+pronounced fatalist.
+
+"Our friend here has had a mishap," said the bishop, indicating the
+fire. "Will you go round to my tent and get some eggs and bacon. Hurry
+up, there's a good fellow."
+
+Barnes turned on a deliberate heel, whilst Bindle and the bishop set
+themselves to the reconstruction of the scout-fire.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Bindle peeped out of the tent, she
+saw the bishop and Bindle engaged in frying eggs and bacon; whilst
+Barnes stood gazing down at them with impassive pessimism.
+
+Rising to stretch his cramped legs, the bishop caught sight of Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Bindle. I hope your headache is better. Mr. Bindle
+has been telling me that he has had a mishap with your breakfast, so I'm
+helping him to cook it. I hope you won't mind if I join you in eating
+it."
+
+"Now that's wot I call tack," muttered Bindle under his breath, "but my!
+ain't 'e a prize liar, 'im a parson too."
+
+Mrs. Bindle came forward, an expression on her face that was generally
+kept for the Rev. Mr. MacFie, of the Alton Road Chapel.
+
+"It's very kind of you, sir. I'm sorry Bindle let you help with the
+cooking."
+
+"But I'm going to help with the eating," cried the bishop gaily.
+
+"But it's not fit work for a----"
+
+"I know what you're going to say," said the bishop, "and I don't want
+you to say it. Here we are all friends, helping one another, and giving
+a meal when the hungry appears. For this morning I'm going to fill the
+role of the hungry. I wonder if you'll make the tea, Mrs. Bindle, Mr.
+Bindle tells me your tea is wonderful."
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" murmured Bindle, casting up his eyes.
+
+With what was almost a smile, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to do the bishop's
+bidding.
+
+During the meal Bindle was silent, leaving the conversation to Mrs.
+Bindle and the bishop. By the time he had finished his third cup of tea,
+Mrs. Bindle was almost gay.
+
+The bishop talked household-management, touched on religion and
+Christian charity, slid off again to summer-camps, thence on to
+marriage, babies and the hundred and one other things dear to a woman's
+heart.
+
+When he finally rose to go, Bindle saw in Mrs. Bindle's eyes a smile
+that almost reached her lips.
+
+"I hope that if ever you honour us again, sir, you will let me know----"
+
+"No, Mrs. Bindle, it's the unexpected that delights me, and I'm going to
+be selfish. Thank you for your hospitality and our pleasant chat," and
+with that he was gone.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle as he gazed after the figure of the
+retreating bishop, "an' me always thinkin' that you 'ad to 'ave an 'ymn
+an' a tin o' salmon to make love to Mrs. B."
+
+"And now, I suppose, you'll go off and leave me to do all the
+washing-up. Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth when the bishop was here.
+You couldn't say a word before him," she snapped, and she proceeded to
+gather together the dishes.
+
+"No," muttered Bindle as he fetched some sticks for the fire. "'E can
+talk tack all right; but when you wants it to last, it's better to 'ave
+a tin o' salmon to fall back on."
+
+That morning Daisy had a serious rival in the field-kitchen, which like
+her was an unknown quantity, capable alike of ministering to the
+happiness of all, or of withholding that which was expected of it.
+
+It was soon obvious to the bishop that the field-kitchen was going to
+prove as great a source of anxiety as Daisy. No one manifested any
+marked inclination to act as stoker. Apart from this, the bishop had
+entirely forgotten the important item of fuel, having omitted to order
+either coal or coke. In addition there was a marked suspicion, on the
+part of the wives, of what they regarded as a new-fangled way of cooking
+a meal. Many of them had already heard of army field-kitchens from their
+husbands, and were filled with foreboding.
+
+It took all the bishop's tact and enthusiasm to modify their obvious
+antagonism.
+
+"I ain't a-goin' to trust anythink o' mine in a rusty old thing like
+that," said a fat woman with a grimy skin and scanty hair.
+
+"Same 'ere, they didn't ought to 'ave let us come down without making
+proper pervision," complained a second, seizing an opportunity when the
+bishop's head was in the stoke-hole to utter the heresy.
+
+"Bless me!" he said, withdrawing his head, unconscious that there was a
+black smudge on the right episcopal cheek. "It will take a dreadful lot
+of fuel. Now, who will volunteer to stoke?" turning his most persuasive
+smile upon the group of men, who had been keenly interested in his
+examination of the contrivance.
+
+The men shuffled their feet, looked at one another, as if each expected
+to find in another the spirit of sacrifice lacking in himself.
+
+Their disinclination was so marked that the bishop's face fell, until he
+suddenly caught sight of Bindle approaching.
+
+"Ah!" he cried. "Here's the man I want. Now, Bindle," he called out,
+"you saved us from the bull, how would you like to become stoker?"
+
+"Surely I ain't as bad as all that, sir," grinned Bindle.
+
+"I'm not speaking professionally," laughed the bishop, who had already
+ingratiated himself with the men because he did not "talk like a ruddy
+parson." "I want somebody to take charge of this field-kitchen," he
+continued. "I'd do it myself, only I've got such a lot of other things
+to see to. I'll borrow some coal from Mr. Timkins."
+
+Bindle gazed dubiously at the unattractive mass of iron, dabbed with the
+weather-worn greens and browns of camouflage and war.
+
+"It's quite simple," said the bishop. "You light the fire here, that's
+the oven, and you boil things here, and--we shall soon get it going."
+
+"I don't mind stokin', sir," said Bindle at length; "but I ain't a-goin'
+to take charge of 'oo's dinner's wot. If there's goin' to be any
+scrappin' with the ladies, well, I ain't in it."
+
+Finally it was arranged that Bindle should start the fire and get the
+field-kitchen into working order, and that the putting-in the oven and
+taking-out again of the various dishes should be left to the discretion
+of the campers themselves, who were to be responsible for the length of
+time required to cook their own particular meals.
+
+With astonishing energy, the bishop set the children to collect wood,
+and soon Bindle, throwing himself into the work with enthusiasm, had the
+fire well alight. There had arrived from the farm a good supply of coal
+and coke.
+
+"You ain't 'alf 'it it unlucky, mate," said the man with the bristly
+chin. "'E ought to 'ave 'ired a cook," he added. "We come 'ere to enjoy
+ourselves, not to be blinkin' stokers. That's like them ruddy parsons,"
+he added, "always wantin' somethin' for nuffin."
+
+"'Ere, come along, cheerful," cried Bindle, "give me a 'and with this
+coke," and, a minute later, the lugubrious Barnes found himself
+sweating like a horse, and shovelling fuel into the kitchen's voracious
+maw.
+
+"That's not the way!"
+
+The man straightened his back and, with one hand on the spade, gazed at
+Mrs. Bindle, who had approached unobserved. With the grubby thumb of his
+other hand he rubbed his chin, giving to his unprepossessing features a
+lopsided appearance.
+
+"Wot ain't the way, missis?" he asked with the air of one quite prepared
+to listen to reason.
+
+"The coke should be damped," was the response, "and you're putting in
+too much."
+
+"But we want it to burn up," he protested.
+
+Mrs. Bindle ostentatiously turned upon him a narrow back.
+
+"_You_ ought to know better, at least, Bindle," she snapped, and
+proceeded to give him instruction in the art of encouraging a fire.
+
+"You'd better take some out," she said.
+
+"'Ere ole sport," cried Bindle, "give us----" he stopped suddenly. His
+assistant had disappeared.
+
+"You mustn't let anyone put anything in until the oven's hot," continued
+Mrs. Bindle, "and you mustn't open the door too often. You'd better fix
+a time when they can bring the food, say eleven o'clock."
+
+"Early doors threepence extra?" queried Bindle.
+
+"We're going to have sausage-toad-in-the-hole, and mind you don't burn
+it."
+
+"I'll watch it as if it was my own cheeild," vowed Bindle.
+
+"If the bishop knew you as I know you, he wouldn't have trusted you
+with this," said Mrs. Bindle, as she walked away with indrawn lips and
+head in the air, stepping with the self-consciousness of a bantam that
+feels its spurs.
+
+"Blowed if she don't think I volunteered for the bloomin' job," he
+muttered, as he ceased extracting pieces of coke from the furnace.
+"Well, if their dinner ain't done it's their fault, an' if it's overdone
+it ain't mine," and with that he drew his pipe from his pocket and
+filled it.
+
+"No luck," he cried, as a grey-haired old woman with the dirt of other
+years on her face hobbled up with a pie-dish. "Doors ain't open yet."
+
+"But it's an onion pie," grumbled the old dame, "and onions takes a lot
+o' cookin'."
+
+"Can't 'elp it," grinned Bindle. "Doors ain't open till eleven."
+
+"But----" began the woman.
+
+"Nothin', doin' mother," said the obstinate Bindle. "You see this 'ere
+is a religious kitchen. It's a different sort from an ordinary
+blasphemious kitchen."
+
+On the stroke of eleven Mrs. Bindle appeared with a large brown
+pie-dish, the sight of which made Bindle's mouth water.
+
+"Now then," he cried, "line up for the bakin'-queue. Shillin' a 'ead an'
+all bad nuts changed. Oh! no, you don't," he cried, as one woman
+proffered a basin. "I'm stoker, not cook. You shoves 'em in yourself,
+an' you fetches 'em when you wants 'em. If there's any scrappin' to be
+done, I'll be umpire."
+
+One by one the dishes were inserted in the oven, and one by one their
+owners retired, a feeling of greater confidence in their hearts now that
+they could prepare a proper dinner. The men went off to get a drink, and
+soon Bindle was alone.
+
+During the first half-hour Mrs. Bindle paid three separate visits to the
+field-kitchen. To her it was a new and puzzling contrivance, and she had
+no means of gauging the heat of the oven. She regarded it distrustfully
+and, on the occasion of the second visit, gave a special word of warning
+to Bindle.
+
+At 11.40 Barnes returned with a large black bottle, which he held out to
+Bindle with an invitation to "'ave a drink."
+
+Bindle removed the cork and put the bottle to his lips, and his Adam's
+apple bobbed up and down joyously.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, as he at length lowered the bottle and his head at the
+same time. "That's the stuff to give 'em," and reluctantly he handed
+back the bottle to its owner, who hastily withdrew at the sight of Mrs.
+Bindle approaching.
+
+When she had taken her departure, Bindle began to feel drowsy. The sun
+was hot, the air was still, and the world was very good to live in.
+Still, there was the field-kitchen to be looked after.
+
+For some time he struggled against the call of sleep; but do what he
+would, his head continued to nod, and his eyelids seemed weighted with
+lead.
+
+Suddenly he had an inspiration. If he stoked-up the field-kitchen, it
+would look after itself, and he could have just the "forty winks" his
+nature craved.
+
+With feverish energy he set to work with the shovel, treating the two
+stacks of coal and coke with entire impartiality. Then, when he had
+filled the furnace, he closed the door with the air of the Roman sentry
+relieving himself of responsibility by setting a burglar-alarm. Getting
+well out of the radius of the heat caused by the furnace, he composed
+himself to slumber behind the heap of coke.
+
+Suddenly he was aroused from a dream in which he stood on the deck of a
+wrecked steamer, surrounded by steam which was escaping with vicious
+hisses from the damaged boilers.
+
+He sat up and looked about him. The air seemed white with vapour, in and
+out of which two figures could be seen moving. He struggled to his feet
+and looked about him.
+
+A few yards away he saw Mrs. Bindle engaged in throwing water at the
+field-kitchen, and then dashing back quickly to escape the smother of
+steam that resulted. The bishop, with a bucket and a pink-and-blue jug,
+was dashing water on to the monster's back.
+
+Bindle gazed at the scene in astonishment, then, making a detour, he
+approached from the opposite side, to see what it was that had produced
+the crisis. Just at that moment, the bishop decided that the pail had
+been sufficiently lightened by the use of the pink-and-blue jug to
+enable him to lift it.
+
+A moment later Bindle was the centre of a cascade of water and a mantle
+of spray.
+
+"'Ere! wot the 'ell?" he bawled.
+
+The bishop dodged round to the other side and apologised profusely,
+explaining how Mrs. Bindle had discovered that the field-kitchen had
+become overheated and that between them they were trying to lower its
+temperature.
+
+"Yes; but I ain't over'eated," protested Bindle.
+
+"You put too much coal in, Bindle; the place would have been red-hot in
+half an hour."
+
+"Well; but look at all them dinners that----"
+
+"Don't talk to him, my lord," said Mrs. Bindle, who from a fellow-camper
+had learned how a bishop should be addressed. "He's done it on purpose."
+
+"No, no, Mrs. Bindle," said the bishop genially. "I'm sure he didn't
+mean to do it. It's really my fault."
+
+And Mrs. Bindle left it at that.
+
+From that point, however, she took charge of the operations, the bishop
+and Bindle working under her direction. The news that the field-kitchen
+was on fire, conveyed to their parents by the children, had brought up
+the campers in full-force and at the double.
+
+There had been a rush for the oven; but Mrs. Bindle soon showed that she
+had the situation well in hand, and the sight of the bishop doing her
+bidding had a reassuring effect.
+
+Under her supervision, each dish and basin was withdrawn, and first aid
+administered to such as required it. Those that were burnt, were tended
+with a skill and expedition that commanded the admiration of every
+housewife present. They were content to leave matters in hands that
+they recognised were more capable than their own.
+
+When the salvage work was ended, and the dishes and basins replaced in
+an oven that had been reduced to a suitable temperature, the bishop
+mopped his brow, whilst Mrs. Bindle stood back and gazed at the
+field-kitchen as St. George might have regarded the conquered dragon.
+
+Her face was flushed, and her hands were grimed; but in her eyes was a
+keen satisfaction. For once in her life she had occupied the centre of
+something larger than a domestic stage.
+
+"My friends," cried the bishop, always ready to say a few words or point
+the moral, "we are all under a very great obligation to our capable
+friend Mrs. Bindle, a veritable Martha among women;" he indicated Mrs.
+Bindle with a motion of what was probably the dirtiest episcopal hand in
+the history of the Church. "She has saved the situation and, what is
+more, she has saved our dinners. Now," he cried boyishly, "I call for
+three cheers for Mrs. Bindle."
+
+And they were given with a heartiness that caused Mrs. Bindle a queer
+sensation at the back of her throat.
+
+The campers flocked round her and found that she whom they had regarded
+as "uppish," could be almost gracious. Anyhow, she had saved their
+dinners.
+
+It was Mrs. Bindle's hour.
+
+"Fancy 'im a-callin' 'er Martha, when 'er name's Lizzie," muttered
+Bindle, as he strolled off. He had taken no very prominent part in the
+proceedings--he was a little ashamed of the part he had played in what
+had proved almost a tragedy.
+
+That day the Tired Workers dined because of Mrs. Bindle, and they knew
+it. Various were the remarks exchanged among the groups collected
+outside the tents.
+
+"She didn't 'alf order the bishop about," remarked to his wife the man
+who should have gone to Yarmouth.
+
+"Any way, if it 'adn't been for 'er you'd 'ave 'ad cinders instead o'
+baked chops and onions for yer dinner," was the rejoinder, as his wife,
+a waspish little woman, rubbed a piece of bread round her plate. "She
+ain't got much to learn about a kitchen stove, I'll say that for 'er,"
+she added, with the air of one who sees virtue in unaccustomed places.
+
+That afternoon when Bindle was lying down inside the tent, endeavouring
+to digest some fifty per cent. more sausage-toad-in-the-hole than he was
+licensed to carry, he was aroused from a doze by the sound of voices
+without.
+
+"We brought 'em for you, missis." It was the man with the stubbly chin
+speaking.
+
+"Must 'ave made you a bit firsty, all that 'eat," remarked another
+voice.
+
+Bindle sat up. Events were becoming interesting. He crept to the opening
+of the tent and slightly pulled aside the flap.
+
+"Best dinner we've 'ad yet." The speaker was the man who had seen a
+field-kitchen dissected at Givenchy. He was just in the line of
+Bindle's vision.
+
+Pulling the flap still further aside, he saw half-a-dozen men standing
+awkwardly before Mrs. Bindle who, with a bottle of Guinness' stout in
+either hand, was actually smiling.
+
+"It's very kind of you," she said. "Thank you very much."
+
+In his astonishment, Bindle dropped the flap, and the picture was
+blotted out.
+
+"Come an' 'ave a look at Daisy," he heard the man with the stubbly chin
+say. It was obviously his conception of terminating an awkward
+interview.
+
+"Good day," he heard a voice mumble, to which Mrs. Bindle replied with
+almost cordiality.
+
+Bindle scrambled back to his mattress, just as Mrs. Bindle pulled aside
+the flap of the tent and entered, a bottle still in either hand. At the
+sight, Bindle became aware of a thirst which until then had slumbered.
+
+"I can do with a drop o' Guinness," he cried cheerily, his eyes upon the
+bottles. "Nice o' them coves to think of us."
+
+"It was me, not you," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder, as she stepped across
+to her mattress.
+
+"But you don't drink beer, Lizzie," he protested. "You're temperance.
+I'll drink 'em for you."
+
+"If you do, I'll kill you, Bindle." And the intensity with which she
+uttered the threat decided him that it would be better to leave the
+brace of Guinness severely alone; but he was sorely puzzled.
+
+
+II
+
+That evening, in the sanded tap-room of The Trowel and Turtle, the male
+summer-campers expressed themselves for the twentieth time
+uncompromisingly upon the subject of bishops and summer-camps. They were
+"fed up to the ruddy neck," and would give not a little to be back in
+London, where it was possible to find a pub "without gettin' a blinkin'
+blister on your stutterin' 'eel."
+
+It was true the field-kitchen had arrived, that they had eaten their
+first decent meal, and there was every reason to believe that the
+marquee was at the station; still they were "sick of the whole streamin'
+business."
+
+To add to their troubles the landlord of The Trowel and Turtle expressed
+grave misgivings as to the weather. The glass was dropping, and there
+was every indication of rain.
+
+"Rain'll jest put the scarlet lid on this blinkin' beano," was the
+opinion expressed by one of the party and endorsed by all, as, with the
+landlord's advice to see that everything was made snug for the night,
+they trooped out of the comfortable tap-room and turned their heads
+towards the Summer-Camp.
+
+At the entrance of the meadow they were met by Patrol-leader Smithers.
+
+"You must slack the ropes of your tents," he announced, "there may be
+rain. Only just slack them a bit; don't overdo it, or they'll come down
+on the top of you if the wind gets up."
+
+"Oh crikey!" moaned a long man with a straggling moustache, as he
+watched Patrol-leader Smithers march briskly down the lane.
+
+For some moments the men gazed at one another in consternation; each
+visualised the desperate state of discomfort that would ensue as the
+result of wind and rain.
+
+"Let's go an' 'ave a look at Daisy," said Bindle inconsequently.
+
+His companions stared at him in surprise. A shrill voice in the distance
+calling "'Enery" seemed to lend to them decision, particularly to 'Enery
+himself. They turned and strolled over to where Daisy was engaged in
+preparing the morrow's milk supply. She had been milked and was content.
+
+"Look 'ere, mates," began Bindle, having assured himself that there were
+no eavesdroppers, "we're all fed up with Summer-Camps for tired
+workers--that so?"
+
+"Up to the blinkin' neck," said a big man with a dirt-grimed skin,
+voicing the opinion of all.
+
+"There ain't no pubs," said a burly man with black whiskers, "no
+pictures, can't put a shillin' on an 'orse, can't do anythink----"
+
+"But watch this ruddy cow," broke in the man with the stubbly chin.
+
+"Well, well, p'raps you're right, only I couldn't 'ave said it 'alf as
+politely," said Bindle, with a grin. "We're all for good ole Fulham
+where a cove can lay the dust. Ain't that so, mates?"
+
+The men expressed their agreement according to the intensity of their
+feelings.
+
+"Well, listen," said Bindle, "an' I'll tell you." They drew nearer and
+listened.
+
+Twenty minutes later, when the voice demanding 'Enery became too
+insistent to be denied, the party broke up, and there was in the eyes of
+all that which spoke of hope.
+
+
+III
+
+That night, as Patrol-leader Smithers had foretold, there arose a great
+wind which smote vigorously the tents of the Surrey Summer-Camp for
+Tired Workers. For a time the tents withstood the fury of the blast;
+they swayed and bent before it, putting up a vigorous defence however.
+Presently a shriek told of the first catastrophe; then followed another
+and yet another, and soon the darkness was rent by cries, shrieks, and
+lamentations, whilst somewhere near the Bindles' tent rose the voice of
+one crying from a wilderness of canvas for 'Enery.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was awakened by the loud slatting of the tent-flap.
+Pandemonium seemed to have broken loose. The wind howled and whistled
+through the tent-ropes, the rain swept against the canvas sides with an
+ominous "swish," the pole bent as the tent swayed from side to side.
+
+"Bindle," she cried, "get up!"
+
+"'Ullo!" he responded sleepily. He had taken the precaution of not
+removing his trousers, a circumstance that was subsequently used as
+evidence against him.
+
+"The tent's coming down," she cried. "Get up and hold the prop."
+
+As she spoke, she scrambled from beneath the blankets and seized the
+brown mackintosh, which she kept ready to hand in case of accidents.
+Wrapping this about her, she clutched at the bending pole, whilst Bindle
+struggled out from among the bedclothes.
+
+Scrambling to his feet, he tripped over the tin-bath. Clutching wildly
+as he fell, he got Mrs. Bindle just above the knees in approved rugger
+style.
+
+With a scream she relinquished the pole to free her legs from Bindle's
+frenzied clutch and, losing her footing, she came down on top of him.
+
+"Leave go," she cried.
+
+"Get up orf my stomach then," he gasped.
+
+At that moment, the wind gave a tremendous lift to the tent. Mrs. Bindle
+was clutching wildly at the base of the pole, Bindle was striving to
+wriggle from beneath her. The combination of forces caused the tent to
+sway wildly. A moment later, it seemed to start angrily from the ground,
+and she fell over backwards, whilst a mass of sopping canvas descended,
+stifling alike her screams and Bindle's protests that he was being
+killed.
+
+It took Bindle nearly five minutes to find his way out from the heavy
+folds of wet canvas. Then he had to go back into the darkness to fetch
+Mrs. Bindle. In order to effect his own escape, Bindle had cut the
+tent-ropes. Just as he had found Mrs. Bindle, a wild gust of wind
+entered behind him, lifted the tent bodily and bore it off.
+
+The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed to strike Mrs. Bindle dumb. To
+be sitting in the middle of a meadow at dead of night, clothed only in a
+nightdress and a mackintosh, with the rain drenching down, seemed to her
+to border upon the indecent.
+
+"You there, Lizzie?" came the voice of Bindle, like the shout of one
+hailing a drowning person.
+
+"Where's the tent?" demanded Mrs. Bindle inconsequently.
+
+"Gawd knows!" he shouted back. "Probably it's at Yarmouth by now. 'Oly
+ointment," he yelled.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I trodden on the marjarine."
+
+"It's all we've got," she cried, her housewifely fears triumphing over
+even the stress of wind and rain and her own intolerable situation.
+
+From the surrounding darkness came shouts and enquiries as disaster
+followed disaster. Heaving masses of canvas laboured and, one by one,
+produced figures scanty of garment and full of protest; but mercifully
+unseen.
+
+Women cried, children shrieked, and men swore volubly.
+
+"I'm sittin' in somethink sticky," cried Bindle presently.
+
+"You've upset the marmalade. Why can't you keep still?"
+
+Keep still! Bindle was searching for the two bottles of Guinness' stout
+he knew to be somewhere among the debris, unconscious that Mrs. Bindle
+had packed them away in the tin-bath.
+
+As the other tents disgorged their human contents, the pandemonium
+increased. In every key, appeals were being made for news of lost units.
+
+By the side of the tin-bath Mrs. Bindle was praying for succour and the
+lost bell-tent, which had sped towards the east as if in search of the
+wise men, leaving all beneath it naked to the few stars that peeped from
+the scudding clouds above, only to hide their faces a moment later as if
+shocked at what they had seen.
+
+Suddenly a brilliant light flashed across the meadow and began to bob
+about like a hundred candle power will-o'-the-wisp. It dodged restlessly
+from place to place, as if in search of something.
+
+Behind a large acetylene motor-lamp, walked Patrol-leader Smithers,
+searching for one single erect bell-tent--there was none.
+
+Shrieks that had been of terror now became cries of alarm. Forms that
+had struggled valiantly to escape from the billowing canvas, now began
+desperately to wriggle back again to the seclusion that modesty
+demanded. With heads still protruding they regarded the scene, praying
+that the rudeness of the wind would not betray them.
+
+Taking immediate charge, Patrol-leader Smithers collected the men and
+gave his orders in a high treble, and his orders were obeyed.
+
+By the time the dawn had begun nervously to finger the east, sufficient
+tents to shelter the women and children had been re-erected, the cause
+of the trouble discovered, and the men rebuked for an injudicious
+slacking of the ropes.
+
+"I ought to have seen to it myself," remarked Patrol-leader Smithers
+with the air of one who knows he has to deal with fools. "You'll be all
+right now," he added reassuringly.
+
+"All right now," growled the man with the stubbly chin as he looked up
+at the grey scudding clouds and then down at the rain-soaked grass. "We
+would if we was ducks, or ruddy boy scouts; but we're men, we are--on
+'oliday," he added with inspiration, and he withdrew to his tent,
+conscious that he had voiced the opinion of all.
+
+
+V
+
+Later that morning three carts, laden with luggage, rumbled their way up
+to West Boxton railway-station, followed by a straggling stream of men,
+women, and children. Overhead heavy rainclouds swung threateningly
+across the sky. Men were smoking their pipes contentedly, for theirs was
+the peace which comes of full knowledge. Behind them they had left a
+litter of bell-tents and the conviction that Daisy in all probability
+would explode before dinner-time. What cared they? A few hours hence
+they would be once more in their known and understood Fulham.
+
+As they reached the station they saw two men struggling with a grey mass
+that looked like a deflated balloon.
+
+The men hailed the party and appealed for help.
+
+"It's the ruddy marquee," cried a voice.
+
+"The blinkin' tent," cried another, not to be outdone in speculative
+intelligence.
+
+"You can take it back with you," cried one of the men from the truck.
+
+"We're demobbed, ole son," said Bindle cheerily. "We've struck."
+
+"No more blinkin' camps for me," said the man with the stubbly chin.
+
+"'Ear, 'ear," came from a number of voices.
+
+"Are we down-hearted?" enquired a voice.
+
+"Nooooooooo!"
+
+And the voices of women and children were heard in the response.
+
+Some half an hour later, as the train steamed out of the station, Bindle
+called out to the porters:
+
+"Tell the bishop not to forget to milk Daisy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, Mrs. B.," said Bindle that evening as he lighted his pipe after
+an excellent supper of sausages, fried onions, and mashed potatoes, "you
+'ad yer 'oliday."
+
+"I believe you was at the bottom of those tents coming down, Bindle,"
+she cried with conviction.
+
+"Well, you was underneath, wasn't you?" was the response, and Bindle
+winked knowingly at the white jug with the pink butterfly on the spout.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+MRS. BINDLE TAKES A CHILL
+
+
+I
+
+    "Your dinner's in the large black saucepan and the potatoes in the
+    blue one. Empty the stewed steak into the yellow pie-dish and the
+    potatoes into the blue vegetable dish and pour water into the
+    saucepans afterwards I've gone to bed--I am feeling ill.
+
+    "E. B.
+
+    "Don't forget to put water into the empty saucepans or they will
+    burn."
+
+Bindle glanced across at the stove as if to verify Mrs. Bindle's
+statement, then, with lined forehead, stood gazing at the table, neatly
+laid for one.
+
+"I never known Lizzie give in before," he muttered, and he walked over
+to the sink and proceeded to have his evening "rinse," an affair
+involving a considerable expenditure of soap and much blowing and
+splashing.
+
+Having wiped his face and hands upon the roller-towel, he walked softly
+across the kitchen, opened the door, listened, stepped out into the
+passage and, finally, proceeded to tiptoe upstairs.
+
+Outside the bedroom door he paused and listened again, his ear pressed
+against the panel. There was no sound.
+
+With the stealth of a burglar he turned the handle, pushed open the door
+some eighteen inches and put his head round the corner.
+
+Mrs. Bindle was lying in bed on her back, her face void of all
+expression, whilst with each indrawn breath there was a hard, metallic
+sound.
+
+Bindle wriggled the rest of his body round the door-post, closing the
+door behind him. With ostentatious care, still tiptoeing, he crossed the
+room and stood by the bedside.
+
+"Ain't you feelin' well, Lizzie?" he asked in a hoarse whisper,
+sufficient in itself to remind an invalid of death.
+
+"Did you put water in the saucepans?" She asked the question without
+turning her head, and with the air of one who has something on her mind.
+The harsh rasp of her voice alarmed Bindle.
+
+"I ain't 'ad supper yet," he said. "Is there anythink you'd like?" he
+enquired solicitously, still in the same depressing whisper.
+
+"No; just leave me alone," she murmured. "Don't forget the water in the
+saucepans," she added a moment later.
+
+For some seconds Bindle stood irresolute. He was convinced that
+something ought to be done; but just what he did not know.
+
+"Wouldn't you like a bit o' fried fish, or--or a pork chop?" he named at
+a venture two of his favourite supper dishes. The fish he could buy
+ready fried, the chop he felt equal to cooking himself.
+
+"Leave me alone." She turned her head aside with a feeble shudder.
+
+"Where are you ill, Lizzie?" he enquired at length.
+
+"Go away," she moaned, and Bindle turned, tip-toed across to the door
+and passed out of the room. He was conscious that the situation was
+beyond him.
+
+That evening he ate his food without relish. His mind was occupied with
+the invalid upstairs and the problem of what he should do. He was
+unaccustomed to illness, either in himself or in others. His instinct
+was to fetch a doctor; but would she like it? It was always a little
+difficult to anticipate Mrs. Bindle's view of any particular action, no
+matter how well-intentioned.
+
+At the conclusion of the meal, he drew his pipe from his pocket and
+proceeded to smoke with a view to inspiration.
+
+Suddenly he was roused by a loud pounding overhead.
+
+"'Oly ointment, she's fallen out!" he muttered, as he made for the door
+and dashed up the stairs two at a time.
+
+As he opened the door, he found Mrs. Bindle sitting up in bed, a red
+flannel petticoat round her shoulders, sniffing the air like a hungry
+hound.
+
+"You're burning my best saucepan," she croaked.
+
+"I ain't, Lizzie, reelly I ain't----" Then memory came to him. He had
+forgotten to put water in either of the saucepans.
+
+"I can smell burning," she persisted, "you----"
+
+"I spilt some stoo on the stove," he lied, feeling secure in the
+knowledge that she could not disprove the statement.
+
+With a groan she sank back on to her pillow.
+
+"The place is like a pigsty. I know it," she moaned with tragic
+conviction.
+
+"No, it ain't, Lizzie. I'm jest goin' to 'ave a clean-up. Wouldn't you
+like somethink to eat?" he enquired again, then with inspiration added,
+"Wot about a tin o' salmon, it'll do your breath good. I'll nip round
+and get one in two ticks."
+
+But Mrs. Bindle shook her head.
+
+For nearly a minute there was silence, during which Bindle gazed down at
+her helplessly.
+
+"I'm a-goin' to fetch a doctor," he announced at length.
+
+"Don't you dare to fetch a doctor to me."
+
+"But if you ain't well----" he began.
+
+"I tell you I won't have a doctor. Look----" She was interrupted by a
+fit of coughing which seemed almost to suffocate her. "Look at the state
+of the bedroom," she gasped at length.
+
+"But wot's goin' to 'appen?" asked Bindle. "You can't----"
+
+"It won't matter," she moaned. "If I die you'll be glad," she added, as
+if to leave no doubt in Bindle's mind as to her own opinion on the
+matter.
+
+"No, I shouldn't. 'Ow could I get on without you?"
+
+"Thinking of yourself as usual," was the retort.
+
+Then, suddenly, she half-lifted herself in bed and, once more raising
+her head, sniffed the air suspiciously.
+
+"I know that saucepan's burning," she said with conviction; but she sank
+back again, panting. The burning of a saucepan seemed a thing of
+ever-lessening importance.
+
+"No, it ain't, Lizzie, reelly it ain't. I filled it right up to the
+brim. It's that bit o' stoo I spilt on the stove. Stinks like billy-o,
+don't it?" His sense of guilt made him garrulous. "I'll go an' scrape it
+orf," he added, and with that he was gone.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" he muttered as he opened the kitchen door, and was
+greeted by a volume of bluish smoke that seemed to catch at his throat.
+
+He made a wild dash for the stove, seized the saucepan and, taking it
+over to the sink, turned on the tap.
+
+A moment later he dropped the saucepan into the sink and started back,
+blinded by a volume of steam that issued from its interior.
+
+Swiftly and quietly he opened the window and the outer door.
+
+"You ain't no cook, J.B.," he muttered, as he unhitched the roller-towel
+and proceeded to use it as a fan, with the object of driving the smell
+out of the window and scullery-door.
+
+When the air was clearer, he returned to the sink and, this time,
+filled both the saucepans with water and replaced them on the stove.
+
+"I wonder wot I better do," he muttered, and he looked about him
+helplessly.
+
+Then, with sudden inspiration, he remembered Mrs. Hearty.
+
+Creeping softly upstairs, he put his head round the bedroom door and
+announced that he was going out to buy a paper. Without waiting for
+either criticism or comment, he quickly closed the door again.
+
+Ten minutes later, he was opening the glass-panelled door, with the
+white curtains and blue tie-ups, that led from Mr. Hearty's Fulham shop
+to the parlour behind.
+
+Mrs. Hearty was sitting at the table, a glass half-full of Guinness'
+stout before her.
+
+At the sight of Bindle, she began to laugh, and laughter always reduced
+her to a state that was half-anguish, half-ecstasy.
+
+"Oh, Joe!" she wheezed, and then began to heave and undulate with mirth.
+
+At the sight of the anxious look on his face she stopped suddenly, and
+with her clenched fist began to pound her chest.
+
+"It's my breath, Joe," she wheezed. "It don't seem to get no better.
+'Ave a drop," she gasped, pointing to the Guinness bottle on the table.
+"There's a glass on the dresser," she added; but Bindle shook an anxious
+head.
+
+"It's Lizzie," he said.
+
+"Lizzie!" wheezed Mrs. Hearty. "What she been doin' now?"
+
+Mrs. Hearty possessed no illusions about her sister's capacity to
+contrive any man's domestic happiness. Her own philosophy was, "If
+things must happen, let 'em," whereas she was well aware that Mrs.
+Bindle strove to control the wheels of destiny.
+
+"When you're my size," she would say, "you won't want to worry about
+anything; it's the lean 'uns as grizzles."
+
+"She's ill in bed," he explained, "an' I don't know wot to do. Says she
+won't see a doctor, an' she's sort o' fidgetty because she thinks I'm
+burnin' the bloomin' saucepans--an' I 'ave burned 'em, Martha," he added
+confidentially. "Such a stink."
+
+Whereat Mrs. Hearty began to heave, and strange movements rippled down
+her manifold chins. She was laughing.
+
+There was, however, no corresponding light of humour in Bindle's eyes,
+and she quickly recovered herself. "What's the matter with 'er, Joe?"
+she gasped.
+
+"She won't say where it is," he replied. "I think it's 'er chest."
+
+"All right, I'll come round," and she proceeded to make a series of
+strange heaving movements until, eventually, she acquired sufficient
+bounce to bring her to her feet. "You go back, Joe," she added.
+
+"Righto, Martha! You always was a sport," and Bindle walked towards the
+door. As he opened it he turned. "You won't say anythink about them
+saucepans," he said anxiously.
+
+"Oh! go hon, do," wheezed Mrs. Hearty, beginning to undulate once more.
+
+With her brother-in-law, Mrs. Hearty was never able to distinguish
+between the sacred and the profane.
+
+Half an hour later, Mrs. Hearty and Bindle were standing one on either
+side of Mrs. Bindle's bed. Mrs. Hearty was wearing a much-worn silk
+plush cape and an old, pale-blue tam-o-shanter, originally belonging to
+her daughter, which gave her a rakish appearance.
+
+"What's the matter, Lizzie?" she asked, puffing like a collie in the Dog
+Days.
+
+"I'm ill. Leave me alone!" moaned Mrs. Bindle in a husky voice.
+
+Bindle looked across at Mrs. Hearty, in a way that seemed to say, "I
+told you she was bad."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Lizzie," was her sister's uncompromising comment. "You
+go for a doctor, Joe."
+
+"I won't have----" began Mrs. Bindle, then she stopped suddenly, a
+harsh, bronchial cough cutting off the rest of her sentence.
+
+"You've got bronchitis," said Mrs. Hearty with conviction. "Put the
+kettle on before you go out, Joe."
+
+"Leave me alone," moaned Mrs. Bindle. "Oh! I don't want to die, I don't
+want to die."
+
+"You ain't goin' to die, Lizzie," said Bindle, bending over her, anxiety
+in his face. "You're goin' to live to be a 'undred."
+
+"You go an' fetch a doctor, Joe. I'll see to 'er," and Mrs. Hearty
+proceeded to remove her elaborate black plush cape.
+
+"I don't want a doctor," moaned Mrs. Bindle. In her heart was a great
+fear lest he should confirm her own fears that death was at hand; but
+Bindle had disappeared on his errand of mercy, and Mrs. Hearty was
+wheezing and groaning as, with arms above her head, she strove to
+discover the single hat-pin with which she had fixed the tam-o-shanter
+to her scanty hair.
+
+"There's two rashers of bacon and an egg on the top shelf of the larder
+for Joe's breakfast," murmured Mrs. Bindle hoarsely.
+
+Mrs. Hearty nodded as she passed out of the door.
+
+In spite of her weight and the shortness of her breath, she descended to
+the kitchen. When Bindle returned, he found the bedroom reeking with the
+smell of vinegar. Mrs. Bindle was sitting up in bed, a towel enveloping
+her head, so that the fumes of the boiling vinegar should escape from
+the basin only by way of her bronchial tubes.
+
+"'Ow is she?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"She's all right," gasped Mrs. Hearty. "Is 'e coming?"
+
+"Be 'ere in two ticks," was the response. "Two of 'em was out, this was
+the third."
+
+He stood regarding with an air of relief the strange outline of Mrs.
+Bindle's head enveloped in the towel. Someone had at last done
+something.
+
+"She ain't a-goin' to die, Martha, is she?" he enquired of Mrs. Hearty,
+his brow lined with anxiety.
+
+"Not 'er," breathed Mrs. Hearty reassuringly. "It's bronchitis. You just
+light a fire, Joe."
+
+Almost before the words were out of her mouth, Bindle had tip-toed to
+the door and was taking the stairs three at a time. Action was the one
+thing he desired. He determined that, the fire once laid, he would set
+to work to clean out the saucepan he had burned. Somehow that saucepan
+seemed to bite deep into his conscience.
+
+The doctor came, saw, and confirmed Mrs. Hearty's diagnosis. Having
+prescribed a steam-kettle, inhalations of eucalyptus, slop food, warmth
+and air, he left, promising to look in again on the morrow.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs, he was waylaid by Bindle.
+
+"It ain't----" he began eagerly, then paused.
+
+The doctor, a young, fair man, looked down from his six feet one, at
+Bindle's anxious enquiring face.
+
+"Nothing to be alarmed about," he said cheerfully. "I'll run in again
+to-morrow, and we'll soon have her about again."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Bindle, drawing a sigh of obvious relief. "Funny
+thing," he muttered as he closed the door on the doctor, "that you never
+seems to think o' dyin' till somebody gets ill. I'm glad 'e's a big
+'un," he added inconsequently. "Mrs. B. likes 'em big," and he returned
+to the kitchen, where he proceeded to scrape the stove and scour the
+saucepan, whilst Mrs. Hearty continued to minister to her afflicted
+sister.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's thoughts seemed to be preoccupied with her domestic
+responsibilities. From time to time she issued her instructions.
+
+"Make Joe up a bed on the couch in the parlour," she murmured hoarsely.
+"I'd keep him awake if he slept here."
+
+"Try an' get Mrs. Coppen to come in to get Joe's dinner," she said, a
+few minutes later.
+
+And yet again she requested her sister to watch the bread-pan to see
+that the supply was kept up. "Joe eats a lot of bread," she added.
+
+To all these remarks, Mrs. Hearty returned the same reply. "Don't you
+worry, Lizzie. You just get to sleep."
+
+That night Bindle worked long and earnestly that things might be as Mrs.
+Bindle had left them; but fate was against him. Nothing he was able to
+do could remove from the inside of the saucepan the damning evidences of
+his guilt. The stove, however, was an easier matter; but even that
+presented difficulties; for, as soon as he applied the moist blacklead,
+it dried with a hiss and the polishing brush, with the semi-circle of
+bristles at the end that reminded him of "'Earty's whiskers," instead of
+producing a polish, merely succeeded in getting burned. Furthermore, he
+had the misfortune to break a plate and a pie-dish.
+
+At the second smash, there was a tapping from the room above, and, on
+going to the door, he heard Mrs. Hearty wheezing an enquiry as to what
+it was that was broken.
+
+"Only an old galley-pot, Martha," he lied, and returned to gather up the
+pieces. These he wrapped in a newspaper and placed in the
+dresser-drawer, determined to carry them off next day. He was convinced
+that if Mrs. Bindle were about again before the merciful arrival of the
+dustman, she would inevitably subject the dust-bin to a rigorous
+examination.
+
+At ten o'clock, Mrs. Hearty heavily descended the stairs and, as well as
+her breath would permit, she instructed him what to do during the
+watches of the night. Bindle listened earnestly. Never in his life had
+he made a linseed poultice, and the management of a steam-kettle was to
+him a new activity.
+
+When he heard about the bed on the couch, he looked the surprise he
+felt. Mrs. Bindle never allowed him even to sit on it. He resolutely
+vetoed the bed, however. He was going to sit up and "try an' bring 'er
+round," as he expressed it.
+
+"Is she goin' to die, Martha?" he interrogated anxiously. That question
+seemed to obsess his thoughts.
+
+Mrs. Hearty shook her head and beat her breast. She lacked the necessary
+oxygen to reply more explicitly.
+
+Having conducted Mrs. Hearty to the garden gate, he returned, closed and
+bolted the door, and proceeded upstairs. As he entered the bedroom, he
+was greeted by a harsh, bronchial cough that terrified him.
+
+"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired, with all the forced optimism of a
+man obviously anxious.
+
+Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, looked at him for a moment, then, closing
+them again, shook her head.
+
+"'As 'e sent you any physic?" he enquired.
+
+Again Mrs. Bindle shook her head, this time without opening her eyes.
+
+Bindle's heart sank. If the doctor didn't see the necessity for
+medicine, the case must indeed be desperate.
+
+"What did he say, Joe?" she enquired in a hoarse voice.
+
+In spite of himself Bindle started slightly at the name. He had not
+heard it for many years.
+
+"'E said you're a-gettin' on fine," he lied.
+
+"Am I very ill? Is it----"
+
+"You ain't got nothink much the matter with you, Lizzie," he replied
+lightly, in his anxiety to comfort, conveying the impression that she
+was in extreme danger. "Jest a bit of a chill."
+
+"Am I dying, Joe?"
+
+In spite of its repetition, the name still seemed unfamiliar to him.
+
+"I shall be dead-meat long before you, Lizzie," he said, and his failure
+to answer her question directly, confirmed Mrs. Bindle in her view that
+the end was very near.
+
+"I'm goin' to make you some arrowroot, now," he said, with an assurance
+in his voice that he was far from feeling. Ever since Mrs. Hearty had
+explained to him the mysteries of arrowroot-making, he had felt how
+absolutely unequal he was to the task.
+
+Through Mrs. Bindle's mind flashed a vision of milk allowed to boil
+over; but she felt herself too near the End to put her thoughts into
+words.
+
+With uncertainty in his heart and anxiety in his eyes, Bindle descended
+to the kitchen. Selecting a small saucepan, which Mrs. Bindle kept for
+onions, he poured into it, as instructed by Mrs. Hearty, a
+breakfast-cupful of milk. This he placed upon the stove, which in one
+spot was manifesting a dull red tint. Bindle was thorough in all things,
+especially in the matter of stoking.
+
+He then opened the packet of arrowroot and poured it into a white
+pudding-basin. At the point where Mrs. Hearty was to have indicated the
+quantity of arrowroot to be used, she had been more than usually short
+of breath, with the result that Bindle did not catch the
+"two-tablespoonfuls" she had mentioned.
+
+He then turned to the stove to watch the milk, forgetting that Mrs.
+Hearty had warned him to mix the arrowroot into a thin paste with cold
+milk before pouring on to it the hot.
+
+As the milk manifested no particular excitement, Bindle drew from his
+pocket the evening paper which, up to now, he had forgotten. He promptly
+became absorbed in a story of the finding at Enfield of a girl's body
+bearing evidences of foul play.
+
+He was roused from his absorption by a violent hiss from the stove and,
+a moment later, he was holding aloft the saucepan, from which a Niagara
+of white foam streamed over the sides on to the angry stove beneath.
+
+"Wot a stink," he muttered, as he stepped back and turned towards the
+kitchen table. "Only jest in time, though," he added as, with spoon in
+one hand, he proceeded to pour the boiling milk on to the arrowroot,
+assiduously stirring the while.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," he muttered as, at the end of some five minutes, he
+stood regarding a peculiarly stodgy mass composed of a glutinous
+substance in which were white bubbles containing a fine powder.
+
+For several minutes he stood regarding it doubtfully, and then, with the
+air of a man who desires to make assurance doubly sure, he spooned the
+mass out on to a plate and once more stood regarding it.
+
+"Looks as if it wants a few currants," he murmured dubiously, as he
+lifted the plate from the table, preparatory to taking it up to Mrs.
+Bindle.
+
+"I brought you somethink to eat, Lizzie," he announced, as he closed the
+door behind him.
+
+Mrs. Bindle shook her head, then opening her eyes, fixed them upon the
+strange viscid mass that Bindle extended to her.
+
+"What is that smell?" she murmured wearily.
+
+"Smell," said Bindle, sniffing the air like a cat when fish is boiling.
+"I don't smell nothink, Lizzie."
+
+"You've burned something," she moaned feebly.
+
+"'Ere, eat this," he said with forced cheerfulness, "then you'll feel
+better."
+
+Once more Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, gazed at the mass, then shaking
+her head, turned her face to the wall.
+
+For five minutes, Bindle strove to persuade her. Finally, recognising
+defeat, he placed the plate on a chair by the bedside and, seating
+himself on a little green-painted box, worn at the edges so that the
+original white wood showed through, he proceeded to look the
+helplessness he felt.
+
+"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired at length, holding his breath
+eagerly as he waited for the reply.
+
+Mrs. Bindle shook her head drearily, and his heart sank.
+
+Suddenly, he remembered Mrs. Hearty's earnest exhortation to keep the
+steam-kettle in operation. Once more he descended to the kitchen and,
+whilst the kettle was boiling, he occupied himself with scraping the
+heat-flaked milk from the top of the stove.
+
+Throughout that night he laboured at the steam-kettle, or sat gazing
+helplessly at Mrs. Bindle, despair clutching at his heart, impotence
+dogging his footsteps. From time to time he would offer her the now cold
+slab of arrowroot, or else enquire if she were feeling better; but Mrs.
+Bindle refused the one and denied the other.
+
+With the dawn came inspiration.
+
+"Would you like a kipper for breakfast, Lizzie?" he enquired, hope
+shining in his eyes.
+
+This time Mrs. Bindle not only shook her head, but manifested by her
+expression such a repugnance that he felt repulsed. The very thought of
+kippers made his own mouth water and, recalling that Mrs. Bindle was
+particularly partial to them, he realised that her condition must be
+extremely grave.
+
+Soon after nine, Mrs. Hearty arrived and insisted on preparing breakfast
+for Bindle. Having despatched him to his work she proceeded to tidy-up.
+
+After the doctor had called, Mrs. Bindle once more sought news as to
+her condition. This time Mrs. Hearty, obviously keen on reassuring the
+invalid, succeeded also in confirming her morbid convictions.
+
+At the sight of the plate containing Bindle's conception of arrowroot
+for an invalid, Mrs. Hearty had at first manifested curiosity, then, on
+discovering the constituent parts of the unsavoury-looking mess, she had
+collapsed upon the green-painted box, wheezing and heaving until her
+gasps for breath caused Mrs. Bindle to open her eyes.
+
+For nearly a week, Bindle and Mrs. Hearty devoted themselves to the sick
+woman. Every morning Bindle was late for work, and when he could get
+home he spent more than half of his dinner-hour by Mrs. Bindle's
+bedside, asking the inevitable question as to whether she were feeling
+better.
+
+In the evening, he got home as fast as bus, train or tram could take
+him, and not once did he go to bed.
+
+During the whole period, Mrs. Bindle was as docile and amenable to
+reason as a poor relation. Never had she been so subdued. From Mrs.
+Hearty she took the food that was prepared for her, and acquiesced in
+the remedies administered. Amidst a perfect tornado of wheezes and
+gaspings, Mrs. Hearty had confided to Bindle that he had better refrain
+from invalid cookery.
+
+Nothing that either the doctor or Mrs. Hearty could say would convince
+Mrs. Bindle that she was long for this world. The very cheerfulness of
+those around her seemed proof positive that they were striving to
+inspire her with a hope they were far from feeling.
+
+In her contemplation of Eternity, Mrs. Bindle forgot her kitchen, and
+the probable desolation Bindle was wreaking. Smells of burning, no
+matter how pungent, left her unmoved, and Bindle, finding that for the
+first time in his life immunity surrounded him, proceeded from one
+gastronomic triumph to another. He burned sausages in the frying-pan,
+boiled dried haddock in a porcelain-lined milk-saucepan and, not daring
+to confuse the flavour of sausages and fish, had hit upon the novel plan
+of cooking a brace of bloaters upon the top of the stove itself.
+
+Culinary enthusiasm seized him, and he invented several little dishes of
+his own. Some were undoubted successes, notably one made up of tomatoes,
+fried onions and little strips of bacon; but he met his Waterloo in a
+dish composed of fried onions and eggs. The eggs were much quicker off
+the mark than the onions, and won in a canter. He quickly realised that
+swift decision was essential. It was a case either of raw onions and
+cooked eggs, or cooked onions and cindered eggs.
+
+Never had such scents risen from Mrs. Bindle's stove to the receptive
+nostrils of the gods; yet through it all Mrs. Bindle made neither
+protest nor enquiry.
+
+Even Mrs. Hearty was appalled by the state in which she found the
+kitchen each morning.
+
+"My word, Joe!" she would wheeze. "You don't 'alf make a mess," and she
+would gaze from the stove to the table, and from the table to the sink,
+all of which bore manifest evidence of Bindle's culinary activities.
+
+Mrs. Bindle, however, seemed oblivious of the cares of this world in her
+anxiety not to make the journey to the next. As her breath became more
+constricted, so her alarm increased.
+
+In her eyes there was a mute appeal that Bindle, for one, found it
+impossible to ignore. Instinctively he sensed what was troubling her,
+and he lost no opportunity of striving to reassure her by saying that
+she would be out and about again before she could say "Jack Robinson."
+
+Still there lurked in her eyes a Great Fear. She had never before had
+bronchitis, and the difficulty she experienced in breathing seemed to
+her morbidly suggestive of approaching death. Although she had never
+seen anyone die, she had in her own mind associated death with a
+terrible struggle for breath.
+
+Once when Bindle suggested that she might like to see Mr. MacFie, the
+minister of the Alton Road Chapel, Mrs. Bindle turned upon him such an
+agonised look that he instinctively shrank back.
+
+"Might-a-been Ole Nick 'isself," he later confided to Mrs. Hearty, "and
+me a-thinkin' to please 'er."
+
+"She's afraid o' dying, Joe," wheezed Mrs. Hearty "Alf was just the same
+when 'e 'ad the flu."
+
+Bindle spent money with the recklessness of a desperate man. He bought
+strange and inappropriate foods in the hope that they would tempt Mrs.
+Bindle's appetite. No matter where his work led him, he was always on
+the look out for some dainty, which he would purchase and carry home in
+triumph to Mrs. Hearty.
+
+"You ain't 'alf a joke, Joe," she wheezed one evening, sinking down upon
+a chair and proceeding to heave and billow with suppressed laughter.
+
+Bindle looked lugubriously at the yellow pie-dish into which he had just
+emptied about a quart of whelks, purchased in the Mile End Road.
+
+"Ain't they good for bronchitis?" he enquired with a crestfallen look.
+
+"Last night it was pig's feet," gasped Mrs. Hearty, "and the night
+before saveloys," and she proceeded to beat her chest with a grubby
+fist.
+
+After that, Bindle had fallen back upon less debatable things. He had
+purchased illustrated papers, flowers, a quarter of a pound of chocolate
+creams, which had become a little wilted, owing to the crowded state of
+the tramcar in which he had returned home that night.
+
+During those anxious days, he collected a strange assortment of
+articles, perishable and otherwise. The thing he could not do was to go
+home without some token of his solicitude.
+
+One evening he acquired a vividly coloured oleograph in a gilt frame,
+which depicted a yawning grave, whilst in the distance an angel was to
+be seen carrying a very material-looking spirit to heaven.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's reception of the gift was a wild look of terror, followed
+by a fit of coughing that frightened Bindle almost as much as it did
+her.
+
+"Funny," he remarked later as he carried the picture out of the room. "I
+thought she'd 'ave liked an angel."
+
+It was Bindle who eventually solved the problem of how to convey
+comfort to Mrs. Bindle's distraught spirit.
+
+One evening he accompanied the doctor to her room. After the customary
+questions and answers between doctor and patient, Bindle suddenly burst
+out.
+
+"I got a bet on with the doctor, Lizzie."
+
+From an anxious contemplation of the doctor's face, where she had been
+striving to read the worst, Mrs. Bindle turned her eyes to Bindle's
+cheery countenance.
+
+"'E's bet me a quid you'll be cookin' my dinner this day week," he
+announced.
+
+The effect of the announcement on Mrs. Bindle was startling. A new light
+sprang into her eyes, her cheeks became faintly pink as she turned to
+the doctor a look of interrogation.
+
+"It's true, Mrs. Bindle, and your husband's going to lose, that is if
+you're careful and don't take a chill."
+
+Within ten minutes Mrs. Bindle had fallen into a deep sleep, having
+first ordered Bindle to put another blanket on the bed--she was going to
+take no risks.
+
+"The first time I ever knowed Mrs. B. 'ear me talk about bettin' without
+callin' me a 'eathen," remarked Bindle, as he saw the doctor out.
+"Wonders'll never cease," he murmured, as he returned to the kitchen.
+"One o' these days she'll be askin' me to put a shillin' on both ways.
+Funny things, women!"
+
+
+II
+
+Bindle's plot with the doctor did more to expedite Mrs. Bindle's
+recovery than all the care that had been lavished upon her. From the
+hour she awakened from a long and refreshing sleep, she began to
+manifest interest in her surroundings. Her appetite improved and her
+sense of smell became more acute, so that Bindle had to select for his
+dishes materials giving out a less pungent odour.
+
+He took the additional precaution of doing his cooking with the window
+and scullery-door open to their fullest extent.
+
+Mrs. Bindle, on her part, took pleasure in planning the meals she
+imagined Mrs. Coppen was cooking. She had not been told that the
+charwoman was in prison for assaulting a policeman with a gin bottle.
+
+"You'll 'ave to look out now, Joe," admonished Mrs. Hearty on one
+occasion as she entered the kitchen and gazed down at the table upon
+which Bindle was gathering together materials for what he described as a
+"top 'ole stoo." "If Lizzie was to catch you making all this mess
+she----" Mrs. Hearty finished in a series of wheezes.
+
+One evening, when Bindle's menu consisted of corned-beef, piccalilli and
+beer, to be followed by pancakes of his own making, the blow fell.
+
+The corned beef, piccalilli and beer were excellent and he had enjoyed
+them; but the pancakes were to be his chef d'oeuvre. His main object in
+selecting pancakes was, as he explained to Mrs. Hearty, "that they don't
+stink while cookin'."
+
+From his sister-in-law he had obtained a general idea of how to proceed.
+She had even gone so far as to assist in mixing the batter.
+
+The fat was bubbling merrily in the frying-pan as he poured in
+sufficient liquid for at least three pancakes.
+
+"You ain't got much to learn about cookin', old cock," he muttered, as
+he watched the fat bubble darkly round the cream-coloured batter.
+
+After a lapse of some five minutes he decided that the underside was
+sufficiently done. Then came the problem of how to turn the pancake. He
+had heard that expert cooks could toss them in such a way that they fell
+into the pan again on the reverse side; but he was too wise to take such
+a risk, particularly as the upper portion of the pancake was still in a
+liquid state.
+
+He determined upon more cautious means of achieving his object. With the
+aid of a tablespoon and a fish-slice, he managed to get the pancake
+reversed. It is true that it had a crumpled appearance, and a
+considerable portion of the loose batter had fallen on to the stove;
+still he regarded it as an achievement.
+
+Just as he was contemplating the turning of the pancake on to a plate, a
+knock came at the front-door. On answering it, Bindle found a butcher's
+boy, who insisted that earlier in the day he had left a pound of
+beef-steak at No. 7, instead of at No. 17. The lad was confident, and
+refused to accept Bindle's assurance that he had neither seen nor heard
+of the missing meat.
+
+The argument waxed fierce and eventually developed into personalities,
+mainly from the butcher-boy.
+
+Suddenly Bindle remembered his pancake. Banging the door in the lad's
+face, he dashed along the passage and opened the kitchen door. For a
+second he stood appalled, the pancake seemed to have eaten up every
+scrap of oxygen the room contained, and in its place had sent forth a
+suffocating smell of burning.
+
+Realising that in swift action alone lay his salvation, Bindle dashed
+across the room, opened the door leading to the scullery and then the
+scullery door itself. He threw up the window and, with water streaming
+from his eyes, approached the stove. A blackened ruin was all that
+remained of his pancake.
+
+Picking up the frying-pan he carried it over to the sink, where he stood
+regarding the charred mass. Suddenly he recollected that he had left
+open the kitchen-door leading into the passage. Dropping the frying-pan,
+he made a dash to close it; but he was too late. There, with her
+shoulders encased in a red flannel petticoat, stood Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"My Gawd!" he muttered tragically.
+
+For nearly a minute she stood as if turned to stone. Then without a word
+she closed the door behind her, walked to the centre of the room, and
+stood absorbing the scene of ruin and desolation about her, Bindle
+backing into the furthest corner.
+
+She regarded the stove, generously flaked with the overflow of Bindle's
+culinary enthusiasm, glanced up at the discoloured dish-covers over the
+mantelpiece, the brightness of which had always been her special pride.
+
+On to the dresser her eye wandered, and was met by a riot of dirty
+dishes and plates, salmon tins, empty beer bottles, crusts of bread,
+reinforced by an old boot.
+
+The kitchen-table held her attention for fully half a minute. The torn
+newspaper covering it was stained to every shade of black and brown and
+grey, the whole being composed by a large yellow splotch, where a cup of
+very liquid mustard had come to grief.
+
+Upon this informal tablecloth was strewn a medley of unwashed plates,
+knives and forks, bread-crumbs, potato-peelings and fish-bones.
+
+Having gazed her fill, and still ominously silent, she proceeded to make
+a thorough tour of inspection, Bindle watching her with distended eyes,
+fear clutching at his heart.
+
+At the sink she stood for some seconds steadfastly regarding Bindle's
+pancake. Her lips had now entirely disappeared.
+
+The crisis came when she opened the dresser drawer and found the
+pie-dish and plate he had broken, but had forgotten to take away.
+Screwing up the packet again, she turned swiftly and hurled it at him
+with all her strength.
+
+Wholly unprepared, Bindle made a vain effort to dodge; but the package
+got him on the side of the head, and a red line above his ear showed
+that Mrs. Bindle had drawn first blood.
+
+"You fiend!" she cried. "Oh, you----!" and dropping into the chair by
+the table she collapsed.
+
+Soon the kitchen was ringing with the sounds of her hysterical laughter.
+Bindle watched her like one hypnotised.
+
+As if to save his reason, a knock came at the outer door. He
+side-stepped swiftly and made a dash for the door giving access to the
+hall. A moment later he was gazing with relief at Mrs. Hearty's pale
+blue tam o' shanter.
+
+"'Ow is she, Joe?" she wheezed.
+
+Then as he stepped aside to allow Mrs. Hearty to precede him into the
+kitchen, Bindle found voice. "I think she's better," he mumbled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE
+
+
+I
+
+"Pleasant company, you are," snapped Mrs. Bindle, as she made an
+onslaught upon the kitchen fire, jabbing it viciously with a short steel
+poker.
+
+Bindle looked up from the newspaper he was reading. It was the third
+attack upon the kitchen fire within the space of five minutes, and he
+recognised the portents--a storm was brewing.
+
+"I might as well be on a desert island for all the company you are," she
+continued. "Here am I alone all day long with no one to speak to, and
+when you come home you just sit reading the horse-racing news in the
+paper."
+
+"Wot jer like to talk about?" he enquired, allowing the paper to drop to
+the floor opposite him.
+
+She sniffed angrily and threw the poker into the ash-pan.
+
+"I wasn't readin' about racin'," he continued pacifically. "I was jest
+readin' about a cove wot went orf with another cove's missis, 'is best
+overcoat and two chickens."
+
+"Stop it!" She stood over him, her lips compressed, her eyes hard and
+steely, as if meditating violence, then, turning suddenly, she walked
+swiftly across to the dresser and pulled out the left-hand drawer.
+Taking from it her bonnet, she put it on her head and proceeded to tie
+the strings beneath her chin.
+
+From behind the kitchen door she unhooked a brown mackintosh, into which
+she struggled.
+
+"Goin' out?" he enquired.
+
+"Yes," she replied, as she tore open the door, "and perhaps I'll never
+come back again," and with a bang that shook the house she was gone.
+
+She took a tram to Hammersmith on her way to see her niece, Millie
+Dixon. She was angry; the day had been one of continual annoyances and
+vexations. Entering the car she buried her elbows deep into the
+redundant figure of a woman who was also endeavouring to enter.
+
+Once inside, the woman began to inform the car what she thought of
+"scraggy 'Uns with faces like a drop of vinegar on the edge of a knife."
+
+"That's the way you gets cancer," she continued, as she stroked the left
+side of her ample bust. "People with elbows like that should 'ave 'em
+padded," and Mrs. Bindle was conscious that the car was with her
+antagonist.
+
+Mrs. Bindle next proceeded to quarrel with the conductor about the fare,
+which had gone up a halfpenny, and she ended by threatening to report
+him for not setting her down between the scheduled stopping-places.
+
+"She's lost a Bradbury and found the water-rate," remarked the
+conductor, as he turned once more to the occupants of the car after
+watching Mrs. Bindle alight.
+
+The fat woman responded to the pleasantry by expressing her views on
+"them wot don't know 'ow to be'ave theirselves like ladies."
+
+With Mrs. Bindle, the lure of Joseph the Second was strong within her.
+When her loneliness became too great for endurance, or the domestic
+atmosphere manifested signs of a greater voltage than the normal, her
+thoughts instinctively flew to the blue-eyed nephew, who slobbered and
+cooed at her and raised his chubby fists in meaningless gestures. Then
+the hunger within her would be appeased, until some chance mention of
+Bindle's name would awaken her self-pity.
+
+She found Millie alone with Joseph the Second asleep in his cot beside
+her. As she feasted her gaze upon the eye-shut babe, Mrs. Bindle was
+conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She wanted to babble
+baby-talk, and gaze into those filmy blue eyes.
+
+In spite of her aunt's protests, Millie made a cup of tea, explaining as
+she did so that Charley was staying late at the office.
+
+"It's a good cake, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle a few minutes later, as she
+delicately cut another small square from the slice of home-made cake
+upon the plate before her. In her eyes there was a look which was a
+tribute from one good cook to another. "Who gave you the recipe?"
+
+"It was all through Uncle Joe," said Millie. "He was always saying what
+a wonderful cook you are, Aunt Lizzie, and that if you didn't feed
+pussy he wouldn't purr," she laughed. "You know what funny things he
+says," she added parenthetically--"so I took lessons. You see," she
+added quaintly, "I wanted Charley to be very happy."
+
+"Pretty lot of purring there is in our house," was Mrs. Bindle's grim
+comment, as she raised her cup-and-saucer from the table upon the
+finger-tips of her left hand and, with little finger awkwardly crooked,
+lifted the cup with her disengaged hand and proceeded to sip the tea
+with Victorian refinement.
+
+"How is Uncle Joe?" asked Millie. "I wish he had come."
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me about your uncle," cried Mrs. Bindle peevishly.
+"He's sitting at home smoking a filthy pipe and reading the horse-racing
+news. I might be dirt under his feet for all the notice he takes of me."
+
+The grievances of the day had been cumulative with Mrs. Bindle, and the
+burden was too heavy to be borne in silence. Beginning with a bad tomato
+among the pound she had bought that morning at Mr. Hearty's Fulham shop,
+her troubles had piled up one upon another to the point when she found
+Joseph the Second asleep.
+
+She had burned one of her best hem-stitched handkerchiefs whilst ironing
+it, the milk had "turned" on account of the thunder in the air and, to
+crown the morning's tragedies, she had burned a saucepan owing to the
+dustman coming at an inconvenient moment.
+
+"He's never been a proper husband to me," she sniffed ominously.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lizzie," said Millie gently, as she leaned forward and placed
+her hand upon Mrs. Bindle's arm.
+
+"He humiliates me before other people and--and sometimes I wish I was
+dead, Millie, God forgive me." Her voice broke as she stifled a sob.
+
+Millie's large, grave eyes were full of sympathy, mixed with a little
+wonder. She could not understand how anyone could find "Uncle Joe" other
+than adorable.
+
+"Ever since I married him he's been the same," continued Mrs. Bindle,
+the flood-gates of self-pity opening wide under the influence of
+Millie's gentleness and sympathy. "He tries to make me look small before
+other people and--and I've always been a good wife to him."
+
+Again she sniffed, and Millie squeezed her arm affectionately.
+
+"He's just the same with Mr.--with your father," Mrs. Bindle corrected
+herself. "Why he stands it I don't know. If I was a man I'd hit him,
+that I would, and hard too," she added as if to allow of no doubt in her
+niece's mind as to the nature of the punishment she would administer.
+"I'd show him; but Mr. Hearty's so good and patient and gentle." Mrs.
+Bindle produced a handkerchief, and proceeded to dab the corners of her
+eyes, although there was no indication of tears.
+
+"But, Aunt Lizzie," protested Millie gently, "I'm sure he doesn't mean
+to make you--to humiliate you." She felt that loyalty to her beloved
+Uncle Joe demanded that she should defend him. "You see, he--he loves a
+joke, and he's very good to--to, oh, everybody! Charley just loves Uncle
+Joe," she added, as if that settled the matter as far as she were
+concerned.
+
+"Look how he goes on about the chapel," continued Mrs. Bindle, fearful
+lest her niece's sympathy should be snatched from her. "I wonder God
+doesn't strike him dead. I'm sure I----"
+
+"Strike him dead!" cried Millie in horror. "Oh, Aunt Lizzie! you don't
+mean that, you couldn't." She paused, seeming to bring the whole twelve
+months of her matronhood to the examination of the problem. "I know he's
+very naughty sometimes," she added sagely, "but he loves you, Aunt
+Lizzie. He thinks that----"
+
+"Love!" cried Mrs. Bindle with all the scorn of a woman who has no
+intention of being comforted. "He loves nothing but his food and his low
+companions. He shames me before the neighbours, talking that familiar
+with common men. When I'm out with him he shouts out to bus-conductors,
+or whistles at policemen, or winks at--at hussies in the street." She
+paused in the catalogue of Bindle's crimes, whilst Millie turned her
+head to hide the smile she could not quite repress.
+
+She herself had been with Bindle when he had called out to his
+bus-conductor friends, and whistled under his breath when passing a
+policeman, "If You Want to Know the Time Ask a Policeman"; but he had
+never winked at girls when he had been with her; of that she was sure.
+
+"You see, Aunt Lizzie, he knows so many people, and they all like him
+and----"
+
+"Only common people, like chauffeurs and workmen," was the retort. "When
+I'm out with him I sometimes want to sink through the ground with shame.
+He lets them call him 'Joe,' and of course they don't respect me." Again
+she sniffed ominously.
+
+"I'll speak to him," said Millie with a wise little air that she had
+assumed since her marriage.
+
+"Speak to him!" cried Mrs. Bindle scornfully. "Might as well speak to a
+brick wall. I've spoken to him until I'm tired, and what does he do?
+Laughs at me and says I'm as----" she paused, as if finding difficulty
+in bringing herself to give Bindle's actual expression--"says I'm as
+holy as ointment, if you know what that means."
+
+"But he doesn't mean to be unkind, Aunt Lizzie, I'm sure he doesn't,"
+protested Millie loyally. "He calls Boy--I mean Charley," she corrected
+herself with a little blush, "all sorts of names," and she laughed at
+some recollection of her own. "Don't you think, Aunt Lizzie----" she
+paused, conscious that she was approaching delicate ground. "Don't you
+think that if you and Uncle Joe were both to try and--and----" she
+stopped, looking across at her aunt anxiously, her lower lip indrawn and
+her eyes gravely wide.
+
+"Try and what?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, a hardness creeping into her voice
+at the thought that anyone could see any mitigating circumstance in
+Bindle's treatment of her.
+
+"I thought that if perhaps--I mean," hesitated Millie, "that if you both
+tried very hard to--to, not to hurt each other----" again she stopped.
+
+"I'm sure I've never said anything to him that all the world might not
+hear," retorted Mrs. Bindle, with the unction of the righteous,
+"although he's always saying things to me that make me hot with shame,
+married woman though I am."
+
+"But, Aunt Lizzie," persisted Millie, clasping Mrs. Bindle's arm with
+both hands, and looking appealingly up into her face, "won't you try,
+just for my sake, pleeeeeease," she coaxed.
+
+"I've tried until I'm tired of trying," was the ungracious retort. "I
+moil and toil, inch and pinch, work day and night to mend his clothes
+and get his food ready, and this is what I get for it. He makes me a
+laughing-stock, talks about me behind my back. Oh, I know!" she added
+hastily, as Millie made a sign of dissent. "He can't deceive me. He
+wants to bring me down to his own level of wickedness, then he'll be
+happy; but he shan't," she cried, the Daughter of the Lord manifesting
+herself. "I'll kill myself first. He shall never have that pleasure, no
+one shall ever be able to say that I let him drag me down.
+
+"I've always done my duty by him," she continued, returning to the
+threadbare phrase that was ever present in her mind. "I've worked
+morning, noon and night to try and keep him respectable, and see how he
+treats me. I'm worse off than a servant, I tell him so and what does he
+do?" she demanded. "Laughs at me," she cried shrilly, answering her own
+question, "and humiliates me before the neighbours. Gets the children to
+call after me, makes----"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Lizzie! You mustn't say that," cried Millie in distress. "I'm
+sure Uncle Joe would never do such a thing. He couldn't," she added with
+conviction.
+
+"Well, they do it," retorted Mrs. Bindle, conscious of a feeling that
+possibly she had gone too far; "only yesterday they did it."
+
+"What did they say?" enquired Millie curiously.
+
+"They said," she paused as if hesitating to repeat what the youth of
+Fenton Street had called after her. Then, as if determined to convict
+Bindle of all the sins possible, she continued, "They called after me
+all the way up Fenton Street----" again she paused.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Lizzie."
+
+"They called 'Mrs. Bindle turns a spindle.'"
+
+Millie bent quickly forward that her involuntary smile might not be
+detected.
+
+"They never call out after him," Mrs. Bindle added, as if that in itself
+were conclusive proof of Bindle's guilt. "And now I must be going,
+Millie," and she rose and once more bent down to gaze where Joseph the
+Second slept the sleep of an easy conscience and a good digestion.
+
+"Bless his little heart," she murmured, for the moment forgetting her
+own troubles in the contemplation of the sleeping babe. "I hope he
+doesn't grow up like his uncle," she added, her thoughts rushing back
+precipitately to their customary channel.
+
+"I'm going to have a talk with Uncle Joe," said Millie, as she followed
+her aunt along the passage, "and then----" she paused.
+
+"You'd talk the hind leg off a donkey before you'd make any impression
+on him," was the ungracious retort. "Good night, Millie, I'm glad you're
+getting on with your cooking," and Mrs. Bindle passed out into the night
+to the solitude of her own thoughts, populated exclusively by Bindle and
+his shortcomings.
+
+
+II
+
+"I haven't told Charley, Uncle Joe, so be careful," whispered Millie, as
+Bindle hung up his hat in the hall.
+
+"'Aven't told 'im wot, Millie?"
+
+"That--that----" she hesitated.
+
+"I get you Steve," he cried, with a knowing wink, "you ain't told 'im
+'ow you're goin' to make yer Aunt Lizzie the silent wife of Fulham."
+
+"Now, Uncle Joe," she admonished with pouting lips, "you promised. You
+will be careful, won't you?" She had spent two hours the previous night
+coaching Bindle in the part he was to play.
+
+"Reg'lar dove I am to-night," he said cheerily. "I could lay an egg,
+only I don't know wot colour it ought to be."
+
+Millie gazed at him for a few seconds in quizzical doubt, then, with a
+shrug of her pretty shoulders, and a pout that was very popular with
+Charley, she turned and led the way into the drawing-room.
+
+Charley Dixon was doing his best to make conversation with his
+aunt-in-law; but Mrs. Bindle's monosyllabic methods proved a serious
+obstacle.
+
+"Now we'll have supper," cried Millie, after Bindle had greeted Charley
+and gazed a little doubtfully at Mrs. Bindle. He seemed on the point of
+making some remark; but apparently thought better of it, instead he
+turned to admire an ornament on the mantelpiece. He had remembered just
+in time.
+
+Millie had spread herself upon the supper. There was a small cold
+chicken that seemed desirous of shrinking within itself; a salad in a
+glass bowl, with a nickel-silver fork and spoon adorned with blue china
+handles; a plate of ham well garnished with parsley; a beef-steak and
+kidney pie, cold, also garnished with parsley; some pressed beef and
+tongue, of a thinness that advertised the professional hand which had
+cut it.
+
+On the sideboard was an infinity of tarts, blanc-mange, stewed fruit and
+custard. With all the recklessness of a young housewife, Millie had
+prepared for four what would have been ample for fourteen.
+
+It was this fact that first attracted Mrs. Bindle's attention. Her keen
+eyes missed nothing. She examined the knives and spoons, identifying
+them as wedding presents. She lifted the silver pepper-castor, a trifle,
+light as air, examined the texture of the tablecloth and felt the
+napkins with an appraising thumb and forefinger, and mentally
+deprecated the lighting of the two pink candles, in silver candlesticks
+with yellow shades, in the centre of the table.
+
+Millie fluttered about, acutely conscious of her responsibilities and
+flushed with anxiety.
+
+"I hope--I hope," she began, addressing her aunt. "I--I hope you will
+like it."
+
+"You must have worked very hard, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle, an unusual
+gentleness in her voice, whereat Millie flushed.
+
+Bindle and Charley were soon at work upon the beef-steak and kidney pie,
+hot potatoes and beans. Bindle had nearly fallen at the first hurdle. In
+the heat of an argument with Charley as to what was the matter with the
+Chelsea football team, he had indiscreetly put a large piece of potato
+into his mouth without realising its temperature. A look of agony
+overspread his features. He was just in the act of making a preliminary
+forward motion to return the potato from whence it came, when Charley,
+with a presence of mind that would have brought tears to Bindle's eyes,
+had they not already been there, indicated the glass of beer in front of
+him.
+
+With a swoop Bindle seized it, raised it to his lips, and cooled the
+heated tuber. Pulling his red silk handkerchief from his breast-pocket,
+he mopped up the tears just as Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon him.
+
+"Don't make me laugh, Charley," he cried with inspiration, "or I'll
+choke," at which Charley laughed in a way that proved him entirely
+devoid of histrionic talent.
+
+"I'll do as much for you one o' these days, Charley," Bindle whispered,
+looking reproachfully at the remains of the potato that had betrayed
+him. "My Gawd! It was 'ot," he muttered under his breath. "Look out for
+yourself an' 'ave beer 'andy."
+
+He turned suddenly to Mrs. Bindle. In his heart there was an
+uncharitable hope that she too might be caught in the toils from which
+he had just escaped; but Mrs. Bindle ate like a book on etiquette. She
+held her knife and fork at the extreme end of the handles, her elbows
+pressed well into her sides, and literally toyed with her food.
+
+After each mouthful, she raised her napkin to her lips, giving the
+impression that it was in constant movement, either to or from her lips.
+
+She took no table risks. She saw to it that every piece of food was
+carefully attached to the fork before she raised it from the plate, and
+never did fork carry a lighter load than hers. After each journey, both
+knife and fork were laid on her plate, the napkin--Mrs. Bindle referred
+to it as a serviette--raised to her unsoiled lips, and she touched
+neither knife nor fork again until her jaws had entirely ceased working.
+
+Between her visits to the kitchen, Millie laboured desperately to
+inveigle her aunt into conversation; but although Mrs. Bindle possessed
+much religious and domestic currency, she had no verbal small change.
+
+During the afternoon, Millie had exhausted domesticity and herself
+alike--and there had been Joseph the Second. Mrs. Bindle did not read,
+they had no common friends, she avoided the pictures, and what she did
+see in the newspapers she so disapproved of as to close that as a
+possible channel of conversation.
+
+"Aunt Lizzie," cried Millie in desperation for something to say, "you
+aren't making a good supper."
+
+"I'm doing very nicely, thank you, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle, who in a
+quarter of an hour had managed to envelop about two square inches of ham
+and three shreds of lettuce.
+
+"You don't like the ham, Aunt Lizzie," protested the hospitable Millie;
+"have some pie."
+
+"It's very nice, thank you, Millie," was the prim reply. "I'm enjoying
+it," and she proceeded to dissect a piece of lettuce to a size that even
+a "prunes and prisms" mouth might have taken without inconvenience.
+
+"Charley," cried Millie presently. "I won't have you talking football
+with Uncle Joe. Talk to Aunt Lizzie."
+
+A moment later she realized her mistake. Bindle returned to his plate,
+Charley looked at his aunt doubtfully, and conversation lay slain.
+
+"Listen," cried Millie who, at the end of five minutes, thought she must
+either say something, or scream. "That's Joey, run up and see, Charley,
+there's a dear"--she knew it was not Joey.
+
+Charley rose dutifully, and once more silence descended upon the table.
+
+"Aunt Lizzie, you _are_ making a poor meal," cried Millie, genuinely
+distressed, as Mrs. Bindle placed her knife and fork at the "all clear"
+angle, although she had eaten less than half what her plate contained.
+
+"I've done very nicely, thank you, Millie, and I've enjoyed it."
+
+Millie sighed. Her eyes wandered from the heavily-laden table to the
+sideboard, and she groaned in spirit. In spite of what Bindle and
+Charley had done, and were doing, there seemed such a lot that required
+to be eaten, and she wondered whether Charley would very much mind
+having cold meat, blanc-mange and jam tarts for the rest of the week.
+
+"It wasn't him, Millie," said Charley, re-entering the room, and
+returning to his plate with the air of one determined to make up for the
+time he had lost in parental solicitude, whilst Bindle pushed his own
+plate from him as a sign that, so far as the first round was concerned,
+he had nothing more to say.
+
+"You're very quiet to-night, Uncle Joe," said Millie, the soul of
+hospitality within her already weeping bitter tears.
+
+"Me?" cried Bindle, starting and looking about him. "I ain't quiet,
+Millie," and then he relapsed once more into silence.
+
+Charley did not seem to notice anything unusual. In his gentle,
+good-natured way he hoped that Millie would not again ask him to talk to
+Aunt Lizzie.
+
+Mrs. Bindle partook, no other word adequately describes the action, of
+an open jam tart with the aid of a spoon and fork, from time to time
+sipping daintily from her glass of lemonade; but she refused all else.
+She had made an excellent meal, she repeatedly assured Millie, and had
+enjoyed it.
+
+Millie found comfort in plying Bindle with dainties. He had received no
+orders to curtail his appetite, so he had decided in his own idiom to
+"let 'em all come"--and they came, tarts and turnovers, fruit-salad and
+blanc-mange, custard and jelly. By the time the cheese and biscuits had
+arrived, he was forced to lean back in his chair and confess himself
+vanquished.
+
+"Not if you was to pay me," he said, as he shook a regretful head.
+
+After the meal, they returned to the drawing-room. Millie showed Mrs.
+Bindle an album of coloured postcards they had collected during their
+honeymoon, whilst Charley wandered about like a restless spirit, missing
+his after-dinner pipe.
+
+"Ain't we goin' to smoke?" Bindle had whispered hoarsely, as they
+entered the drawing-room; but Charley shook a sad and resigned head.
+
+"She mightn't like it," he whispered back, so Bindle seated himself in
+the corner of a plush couch, and wondered how long it would be before
+Mrs. Bindle made a move to go home.
+
+Millie was trying her utmost to make the postcards last as long as
+possible. Charley had paused beside her in his restless strolling about
+the room, and proceeded to recall unimportant happenings at the places
+pictured.
+
+At length the photographs were exhausted, and both Millie and Charley
+began to wonder what was to take their place, when Mrs. Bindle rose,
+announcing that she must be going. Millie pressed her to stay, and
+strove to stifle the thanksgiving in her heart, whilst Charley began to
+count the minutes before he would be able to "light up."
+
+The business of parting, however, occupied time, and it was fully twenty
+minutes later that Bindle and Mrs. Bindle, accompanied by Charley and
+Millie, passed down the narrow little passage towards the hall door.
+
+Another five minutes were occupied in remarks upon the garden and how
+they had enjoyed themselves--and then the final goodnights were uttered.
+
+As his niece kissed him, Bindle muttered, "I been all right, ain't I,
+Millikins?" and she squeezed his arm reassuringly, at which he sighed
+his relief. The tortures he had suffered that evening were as nothing,
+provided Millie were happy.
+
+As the hall door closed, Charley struck a match and lighted his pipe.
+Returning to the drawing-room, he dropped into the easiest of the uneasy
+chairs.
+
+"What's the matter with Uncle Joe to-night, Millie?" he enquired, and
+for answer Millie threw herself upon him, wound her arms round his neck
+and sobbed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Been a pleasant evenin', Lizzie," said Bindle conversationally, as they
+walked towards the nearest tram-stop.
+
+Mrs. Bindle sniffed.
+
+"Nice young chap, Charley," he remarked a moment later. He was
+determined to redeem his promise to Millie.
+
+"What was the matter with you to-night?" she demanded aggressively.
+
+"Matter with me?" he enquired in surprise. "There ain't nothink the
+matter with me, Lizzie, I enjoyed myself fine."
+
+"Yes, sitting all the evening as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth."
+
+"But----" began Bindle.
+
+"Oh, I know you," she interrupted. "You wanted Millie and Charley to
+think it's all my fault and that you're a saint. They should see you in
+your own home," she added.
+
+"But I ain't said nothink," he protested.
+
+"You aren't like that at home," she continued. "There you do nothing but
+blaspheme and talk lewd talk and sneer at Mr. Hearty. Oh! I can see
+through you," she added, "and you needn't think you deceived Millie, or
+Charley. They're not the fools you think them."
+
+Bindle groaned in spirit. He had suffered acutely that evening, mentally
+having had to censor every sentence before uttering it.
+
+"Then look at the way you behaved. Eating like a gormand. You made me
+thoroughly ashamed of you. I could see Millie watching----"
+
+"But she was watchin' to see I 'ad enough to eat," he protested.
+
+"Don't tell me. Any decently refined girl would be disgusted at the way
+you behave. Eating jam tarts with your fingers."
+
+"But wot should I eat 'em with?"
+
+Before she had time to reply, the tram drew up and, following her usual
+custom, Mrs. Bindle made a dart for it, elbowing people right and left.
+She could always be trusted to make sufficient enemies in entering a
+vehicle to last most people for a lifetime.
+
+"But wot should I eat 'em with?" enquired Bindle again when they were
+seated.
+
+"Sssh!" she hissed, conscious that a number of people were looking at
+her, including several who had made acquaintance with the sharpness of
+her elbows.
+
+"But if you ain't to eat jam tarts with yer fingers, 'ow are you goin'
+to get 'em into yer mouth?" he enquired in a hoarse whisper, which was
+easily heard by the greater part of the occupants of the tram. "They
+don't jump," he added.
+
+A ripple of smiles broke out on the faces of most of their
+fellow-passengers.
+
+"_Will_ you be quiet?" hissed Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"Mind you don't grow up like that, kid," whispered an amorous youth to a
+full-busted young woman, whose hand he was grasping with interlaced
+fingers.
+
+Mrs. Bindle heard the remark and drew in her lips still further.
+
+"Been gettin' yer face sticky, mate?" enquired a little man sitting next
+to Bindle, in a voice of sympathy.
+
+Bindle turned and gave him a wink.
+
+No sooner had they alighted from the tram at The King's Head, than Mrs.
+Bindle's restraint vanished. All the way to Fenton Street she reviled
+Bindle for humiliating her before other people. She gave full rein to
+the anger that had been simmering within her all the evening. Millie
+should be told of his conduct. Charley should learn to hate him, and
+Little Joey to execrate the very mention of his name.
+
+"But you shouldn't go a-jabbin' yer elbows in people's----" Bindle
+paused for a word sufficiently delicate for Mrs. Bindle's ears and
+which, at the same time, would leave no doubt as to the actual portion
+of the anatomy to which he referred.
+
+"I'll jab my elbows into you, if you're not careful," was the
+uncompromising response. "I'm referring to the tarts."
+
+And Bindle made a bolt for it.
+
+"Now this all comes through tryin' to sit on a safety-valve," he
+muttered. "Mrs. B. 'as got to blow-orf some'ow, or she'd bust."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MRS. BINDLE'S DISCOVERY
+
+
+I
+
+On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Bindle went to chapel to engage in the
+weekly temperance service. As temperance meetings always engendered in
+Mrs. Bindle the missionary spirit, Bindle selected Wednesday for what he
+called his "night out."
+
+If he got home early, it was to encounter Mrs. Bindle's prophetic views
+as to the hereafter of those who spent their leisure in gin-palaces.
+
+At first Mrs. Bindle had shown her resentment by waiting up until Bindle
+returned; but as he made that return later each Wednesday, she had at
+last capitulated, and it became no longer necessary for him to walk the
+streets until two o'clock in the morning, in order to slip upstairs
+unchallenged as to where he expected to go when he died.
+
+One Wednesday night, as he was on his way home, whistling "Bubbles" at
+the stretch of his powers, he observed the figure of a girl standing
+under a lamp-post, her head bent, her shoulders moving convulsively.
+
+"'Ullo--'ullo!" he cried. "Wot's the matter now?"
+
+At Bindle's words she gave him a fleeting glance, then, turning once
+more to the business on hand, sobbed the louder.
+
+"Wot's wrong, my dear?" Bindle enquired, regarding her with a puzzled
+expression. "Oo's been 'urting you?"
+
+"I'm--I'm afraid," she sobbed.
+
+"Afraid! There ain't nothink to be afraid of when Joe Bindle's about.
+Wot you afraid of?"
+
+"I'm--I'm afraid to go home," sobbed the girl.
+
+"Afraid to go 'ome," repeated Bindle. "Why?"
+
+"M-m-m-m-mother."
+
+"Wot's up with 'er? She ill?"
+
+"She--she'll kill me."
+
+"Ferocious ole bird," he muttered. Then to the girl, "'Ere, you didn't
+ought to be out at this time o' night, a young gal like you. Why, it's
+gettin' on for twelve. Wot's wrong with Ma?"
+
+"She'll kill me. I darsen't go home." She looked up at Bindle, a
+pathetic figure, with twitching mouth and frightened eyes. Then,
+controlling her sobs, she told her story.
+
+She had been to Richmond with a girl friend, and some boys had taken
+them for a run on their motorcycles. One of the cycles had developed
+engine-trouble and, instead of being home by ten, it was half-past
+eleven before she got to Putney Bridge Station.
+
+"I darsen't go home," she wailed, as she finished her story. "Mother'll
+kill me. She said she would last time. I know she will," and again she
+began to cry, this time without any effort to shield her tear-stained
+face. Fear had rendered her regardless of appearances.
+
+"'Ere, I'll take you 'ome," cried Bindle, with the air of a man who has
+arrived at a mighty decision. "If Mrs. B. gets to 'ear of it, there'll
+be an 'ell of a row though," he muttered.
+
+The girl appeared undecided.
+
+"You won't let her hurt me?" she asked, with the appealing look of a
+frightened child.
+
+"Well, I can't start scrappin' with your ma, my dear," he said
+uncertainly; "but I'll do my best. My missis is a bit of a scrapper, you
+see, an' I've learned 'ow to 'andle 'em. Of course, if she liked 'ymns
+an' salmon, it'd be sort of easier," he mused, "not that there's much
+chance of gettin' a tin' o' salmon at this time o' night."
+
+The girl, unaware of his habit of trading on Mrs. Bindle's fondness for
+tinned salmon and hymn tunes, looked at him with widened eyes.
+
+"No," he continued, "it's got to be tack this time. 'Ere, come along,
+young un, we can't stay 'ere all night. Where jer live?"
+
+She indicated with a nod the end of the street in which they stood.
+
+"Well, 'ere goes," he cried, starting off, the girl following. As they
+proceeded, her steps became more and more reluctant, until at last she
+stopped dead.
+
+"'Wot's up now?" he enquired, looking over his shoulder.
+
+"I darsen't go in," she said tremulously. "I d-d-darsen't."
+
+"'Ere, come along," cried Bindle persuasively. "Your ma can't eat you.
+Which 'ouse is it?"
+
+"That one." She nodded in the direction of a gate opposite a lamp-post,
+fear and misery in her eyes.
+
+"Come along, my dear. I won't let 'er 'urt you," and, taking her gently
+by the arm, he led her towards the gate. Here, however, the girl stopped
+once more and clung convulsively to the railings, half-dead with fright.
+
+Opening the gate, Bindle walked up the short tiled path and, reaching
+up, grasped the knocker. As he did so, the door opened with such
+suddenness that he lurched forward, almost into the arms of a stout
+woman with a fiery face and angry eyes.
+
+From Bindle her gaze travelled to the shrinking figure clinging to the
+railings.
+
+"You old villain!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with passion, making a
+dive at Bindle, who, dodging nimbly, took cover behind a moth-eaten
+evergreen in the centre of the diminutive front garden.
+
+"You just let me catch you, keeping my gal out like this, and you old
+enough to be her father, too. As for you, my lady, you just wait till I
+get you indoors. I'll show you, coming home at this time o' night."
+
+She made another dive at Bindle; but her bulk was against her, and he
+found no difficulty in evading the attack.
+
+"What d'you mean by it?" she demanded, as she glared at him across the
+top of the evergreen, "and 'er not seventeen yet. For two pins I'd have
+you taken up."
+
+"'Ere, old 'ard, missis," cried Bindle, keeping a wary eye upon his
+antagonist. "I ain't wot you think. I'm a dove, that's wot I am, an'
+'ere are you a-playin' chase-me-Charlie round this 'ere----"
+
+"Wait till I get you," she shouted, drowning Bindle's protest. "I'll
+give you dove, keeping my gal out all hours. You just wait. I'll show
+you, or my name ain't Annie Brunger."
+
+She made another dive at him; but, by a swift movement, he once more
+placed the diminutive evergreen between them.
+
+"Mother!--mother!" The girl rushed forward and clung convulsively to her
+mother's arm. "Mother, don't!"
+
+"You wait, my lady," cried Mrs. Brunger, shaking off her daughter's
+hand. "I'll settle with you when I've finished with him, the beauty.
+I'll show him!"
+
+The front door of the house on the right slowly opened, and a
+curl-papered head peeped out. Two doors away on the other side a window
+was raised, and a man's bald head appeared. The hounds of scandal
+scented blood.
+
+"Mother!" The girl shook her mother's arm desperately. "Mother, don't!
+This gentleman came home with me because I was afraid."
+
+"What's that?" Mrs. Brunger turned to her daughter, who stood with
+pleading eyes clutching her arm, her own fears momentarily forgotten.
+
+"He saw me crying and said he'd come home with me because----Oh, mother,
+don't!--don't!"
+
+Two windows on the opposite side of the way were noisily pushed up, and
+heads appeared.
+
+"'Ere, look 'ere, missis," cried Bindle, seizing his opportunity. "It's
+no use a-chasin' me round this 'ere gooseberry bush. I told you I ain't
+no lion. I come to smooth things over. A sort o' dove, you know."
+
+"Mother!--mother!" Again the girl clutched her mother's arm, shaking it
+in her excitement. "I was afraid to come home, honestly I was, and--and
+he saw me crying and--and said----" Sobs choked her further utterance.
+
+"Come inside, the pair of you." Mrs. Brunger had at length become
+conscious of the interest of her neighbours. "Some folks never can mind
+their own business," she added, as a thrust at the inquisitive. Turning
+her back on the delinquent pair, she marched in at the door, along the
+short passage to the kitchen at the farther end, where the gas was
+burning.
+
+Bindle followed her confidently, and stood, cap in hand, by the
+kitchen-table, looking about him with interest. The girl, however,
+remained flattened against the side of the passage, as if anxious to
+efface herself.
+
+"Elsie, if you don't come in, I'll fetch you," announced the mother
+threateningly.
+
+Elsie slid along the wall and round the door-post, making for the corner
+of the room farthest from her mother. There she stood with terrified
+eyes fixed upon her parent.
+
+"Now, then, what have you two got to say for yourselves?" Mrs. Brunger
+looked from Bindle to her daughter, with the air of one who is quite
+prepared to assume the responsibilities of Providence.
+
+"Well, it was like this 'ere," said Bindle easily. "I see 'er," he
+jerked his thumb in the direction of the girl, "cryin' under a lamp-post
+down the street, so I asks 'er wot's up."
+
+Bindle paused, and Mrs. Brunger turned to her daughter with a look of
+interrogation.
+
+"I--I----" began the girl, then she, too, stopped abruptly.
+
+"You've been with that hussy Mabel Warnes again." There was accusation
+and conviction in Mrs. Brunger's tone. "Don't you deny it," she
+continued, although the girl made no sign of doing so. "I warned you
+what I'd do to you if you went out with that fast little baggage again,
+and I'll do it, so help me God, I will." Her voice was rising angrily.
+
+"'Ere, look 'ere, missis----" began Bindle.
+
+"My name's Brunger--Mrs. Brunger," she added, to prevent any possibility
+of misconception. "I thought I told you once."
+
+"You did," said Bindle cheerfully. "Now, look 'ere," he continued
+persuasively, "we're only young once."
+
+Mrs. Brunger snorted disdainfully; and the look she gave her daughter
+caused the girl to shrink closer to the wall.
+
+"Rare cove I was for gettin' 'ome late," remarked Bindle reminiscently.
+
+"More shame you," was the uncompromising retort.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if you was a bit late now an' again when you was a
+gal," he continued, looking up at Mrs. Brunger with critical
+appreciation--"or else the chaps didn't know wot was wot," he added.
+
+"Two blacks don't make a white," was Mrs. Brunger's obscure comment.
+
+"Yes; but a gal can't 'elp bein' pretty," continued Bindle, following
+the line of his reasoning. "Now, if you'd been like some ma's, no one
+wouldn't 'ave wanted to keep 'er out."
+
+"Who are you getting at?" demanded Mrs. Brunger; but there was no
+displeasure in her voice.
+
+"It's only the pretty ones wot gets kept out late," continued Bindle
+imperturbably, his confidence rising at the signs of a weakening
+defence. "Now, with a ma like you," he paused eloquently, "it was bound
+to 'appen. You didn't ought to be too 'ard on the gal, although, mind
+you," he said, turning to the culprit, "she didn't ought to go out with
+gals against her ma's wishes, an' she's goin' to be a good gal in
+future--ain't that so, my dear?"
+
+The girl nodded her head vigorously.
+
+"There, you see," continued Bindle, turning once more to Mrs. Brunger,
+whose face was showing marked signs of relaxation. "Now, if I was a
+young chap again," he continued, looking from mother to daughter, "well,
+anythink might 'appen."
+
+"Go on with you, do." Mrs. Brunger's good humour was returning.
+
+"Well, I suppose I must," said Bindle, with a grin. "It's about time I
+was 'opping it."
+
+His announcement seemed to arouse the girl. Hitherto she had stood a
+silent witness, puzzled at the strange turn events were taking; but now
+she realised that her protector was about to leave her to the enemy. She
+started forward, and clutched Bindle by the arm.
+
+"Don't go!--oh, don't go! I----" She stopped suddenly, and looked across
+at her mother.
+
+"You ain't a-goin' to be too 'ard on 'er?" said Bindle, interpreting the
+look.
+
+Mrs. Brunger looked irresolute. Her anger found its source in the
+mother-instinct of protection rather than in bad temper. Bindle was
+quick to take advantage of her indecision. With inspiration he turned to
+the girl.
+
+"Now, you mustn't worry yer ma, my dear. She's got quite enough to see
+to without bein' bothered by a pretty little 'ead like yours. Now, if
+she forgives you, will you promise 'er not to be late again, an' not to
+go with that gal wot she don't like?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes! I won't, mums, honestly." She looked appealingly at her
+mother, and saw something in her face that was reassuring, for a moment
+later she was clinging almost fiercely to her mother's arm.
+
+"You must come in one Saturday evening and see my husband," said Mrs.
+Brunger a few minutes later, as Bindle fumbled with the latch of the
+hall door. "He's on _The Daily Age_, and is only home a-Saturday
+nights."
+
+"Oh, do, _please_!" cried the girl, smiles having chased all but the
+marks of tears from her face, and Bindle promised that he would.
+
+"Now, if Mrs. B. was to 'ear of these little goin's on," he muttered, as
+he walked towards Fenton Street, "there'd be an 'ell of a row. Mrs. B.'s
+a good woman an', bein' a good woman, she's bound to think the worst,"
+and he swung open the gate that led to his "Little Bit of 'Eaven."
+
+
+II
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Stitchley."
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Bindle. I 'ope I 'aven't come at a inconvenient
+time."
+
+"No, please come in," said Mrs. Bindle, with almost geniality, as she
+stood aside to admit her caller, then, closing the front-door behind
+her, she opened that leading to the parlour.
+
+"Will you just wait here a minute, Mrs. Stitchley, and I'll pull up the
+blind?" she said.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley smirked and smiled, whilst Mrs. Bindle made her way, with
+amazing dexterity, through the maze of things with which the room was
+crammed, in the direction of the window.
+
+A moment later, she pulled up the dark-green blind, which was always
+kept drawn so that the carpet might not fade, and the sunlight shuddered
+into the room. It revealed a grievous medley of antimacassared chairs,
+stools, photograph-frames, pictures and ornaments, all of which were
+very dear to Mrs. Bindle's heart.
+
+"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Stitchley?" enquired Mrs. Bindle primly. Mrs.
+Stitchley was inveterate in her attendance at the Alton Road Chapel;
+Bindle had once referred to her as "a chapel 'og."
+
+"Thank you, my dear, thank you," said Mrs. Stitchley, whose manner
+exuded friendliness.
+
+She looked about her dubiously, and it was Mrs. Bindle who settled
+matters by indicating a chair of stamped-plush, the seat of which rose
+hard and high in the centre. Over the back was an ecru antimacassar,
+tied with a pale-blue ribbon. After a moment's hesitation, Mrs.
+Stitchley entrusted it with her person.
+
+"It's a long time since I see you, Mrs. Bindle." They had met three
+evenings previously at chapel.
+
+Mrs. Bindle smiled feebly. She always suspected Mrs. Stitchley of
+surreptitious drinking, in spite of the fact that she belonged to the
+chapel Temperance Society. Mrs. Stitchley's red nose, coupled with the
+passion she possessed for chewing cloves, had made her fellow-worshipper
+suspicious.
+
+"Wot a nice room," Mrs. Stitchley looked about her appreciatively, "so
+genteel, and 'ow refined."
+
+Mrs. Bindle smirked.
+
+"I was sayin' to Stitchley only yesterday mornin' at breakfast--he was
+'avin' sausages, 'e bein' so fond of 'em--'Mrs. Bindle 'as taste,' I
+says, '_and_ refinement.'"
+
+Mrs. Bindle, who had seated herself opposite her visitor, drew in her
+chin and folded her hands before her, with the air of one who is
+receiving only what she knows to be her due.
+
+There was a slight pause.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Stitchley, with a sigh, "I was always one for
+refinement _and_ respectability."
+
+Mrs. Bindle said nothing. She was wondering why Mrs. Stitchley had
+called. Although she would not have put it into words, or even allow it
+to find form in her thoughts, she knew Mrs. Stitchley to be a woman to
+whom gossip was the breath of life.
+
+"Now you're wonderin' why I've come, my dear," continued Mrs. Stitchley,
+who always grew more friendly as her calls lengthened, "but it's a
+dooty. I says to Stitchley this mornin', 'There's that poor, dear Mrs.
+Bindle a-livin' in innocence of the way in which she's bein' vilated.'"
+Mrs. Stitchley was sometimes a little loose in the way she constructed
+her sentences and the words she selected.
+
+Mrs. Bindle's lips began to assume a hard line.
+
+"I don't understand, Mrs. Stitchley," she said.
+
+"Jest wot I says to Stitchley, 'She don't know, the poor lamb,' I says,
+''ow she's bein' deceived, 'ow she's----'" Mrs. Stitchley paused, not
+from any sense of the dramatic; but because of a violent hiccough that
+had assailed her.
+
+"Excuse me, mum--Mrs. Bindle," she corrected herself; "but I always was
+a one for 'iccups, an' when it ain't 'iccups it's spasms. Stitchley was
+sayin' to me only yesterday, no it wasn't, it was the day before,
+that----"
+
+"Won't you tell me what you were going to?" said Mrs. Bindle. She knew
+of old how rambling were Mrs. Stitchley's methods of narration.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure," and she nodded until the jet ornament in her
+black bonnet seemed to have become palsied. "Well, my dear, it's like
+this. As I was sayin' to Stitchley this mornin', 'I can't see poor Mrs.
+Bindle deceived by that monster.' I see through 'im that evenin',
+a-turnin' your 'appy party into----" she paused for a simile--"into wot
+'e turned it into," she added with inspiration.
+
+"Oh! the wickedness of this world, Mrs. Bindle. Oh! the sin and error."
+She cast up her bleary, watery blue eyes, and gazed at the yellow paper
+flycatcher, and once more the jet ornament began to shiver.
+
+"Please tell me what it is, Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs. Bindle, conscious
+of a sense of impending disaster.
+
+"The wicked man, the cruel, heartless creature; but they're all the
+same, as I tell Stitchley, and him with a wife like you, Mrs. Bindle, to
+carry on with a young Jezebel like that, to----"
+
+"Carry on with a young Jezebel!"
+
+Mrs. Bindle's whole manner had changed. Her uprightness seemed to have
+become emphasised, and the grim look about her mouth had hardened into
+one of menace. Her eyes, hard as two pieces of steel, seemed to pierce
+through her visitor's brain. "What do you mean?" she demanded.
+
+Instinctively Mrs. Stitchley recoiled.
+
+"As I says to Stitchley----" she began, when Mrs. Bindle broke in.
+
+"Never mind Mr. Stitchley," she snapped. "Tell me what you mean."
+
+Mrs. Stitchley looked hurt. Things were not going exactly as she had
+planned. In the retailing of scandal, she was an artist, and she
+constructed her periods with a view to their dramatic effect upon her
+listener.
+
+"Yes," she continued reminiscently, "'e's been a good 'usbindt 'as
+Stitchley. Never no gallivanting with other females. 'E's always said:
+'Matilda, my dear, there won't never be another woman for me.' His very
+words, Mrs. Bindle, I assure _you_," and Mrs. Stitchley preened herself
+like a moth-eaten peacock.
+
+"You were saying----" began Mrs. Bindle.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure," said Mrs. Stitchley; "but we all 'ave our
+crosses to bear. The Lord will give you strength, Mrs. Bindle, just as
+He gave me strength when Stitchley lorst 'is leg. 'The Lord giveth and
+the Lord taketh away,'" she added enigmatically.
+
+"Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs. Bindle, rising with an air of decision, "I
+insist on your telling me what you mean."
+
+"Ah! my dear," said Mrs. Stitchley, with an emotion in her voice that
+she usually kept for funerals, "I knew 'ow it would be. I says to
+Stitchley, 'Stitchley,' I says, 'that poor, dear woman will suffer. She
+was made for sufferin'. She's one of them gentle, tender lambs, that's
+trodden underfoot by the serpent's tooth of man's lust; but she will
+bear 'er cross.' Them was my very words, Mrs. Bindle," she added,
+indifferent to the mixture of metaphor.
+
+Mrs. Bindle looked at her visitor helplessly. Her face was very white;
+but she realised Mrs. Stitchley's loquacity was undammable.
+
+"A-takin' 'ome a young gal at two o'clock in the mornin', and then bein'
+asked in by 'er mother--and 'er father away at 'is work every night--and
+'er not mor'n seventeen, and all the neighbours with their 'eads out of
+the windows, and 'er a-screechin' and askin' of 'er mother not to 'it
+'er, and 'er sayin' 'Wait 'till I get you, my gal,' and callin' 'im an
+ole villain. 'E ought to be took up. I says to Stitchley, 'Stitchley,' I
+says, 'that man ought to be took up, an' it's only because of Lord
+George that 'e ain't.'"
+
+"What do you mean?" Mrs. Bindle made an effort to control herself. "Who
+was it that took some one home at two o'clock in the morning?"
+
+"You poor lamb," croaked Mrs. Stitchley, gazing up at Mrs. Bindle, whose
+unlamblike qualities were never more marked than at that moment. "You
+poor lamb. You're being deceived, Mrs. Bindle, cruelly and wickedly
+vilated. Your 'usbindt's carrying on with a young gal wot might 'ave
+been 'is daughter. Oh! the wickedness of this world, the----"
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+Mrs. Stitchley started back. The words seemed almost to hit her in the
+face. She blinked her eyes uncertainly, as she looked at Mrs. Bindle,
+the embodiment of an outraged wife and a vengeful fury.
+
+"I'm afraid I must be going, my dear," said Mrs. Stitchley; "but I felt
+I ought to tell you."
+
+"Not until you've told me everything," said Mrs. Bindle, with decision,
+as she moved towards the door, "and you don't leave this room until
+you've explained what you mean."
+
+Mrs. Stitchley turned round in her chair as Mrs. Bindle passed across
+the room, surprise and fear in her eyes.
+
+"Lord a mercy me!" she cried. "Don't ee take on like that, Mrs. Bindle.
+'E ain't worth it."
+
+Then Mrs. Bindle proceeded to make it abundantly clear to Mrs. Stitchley
+that she required the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
+without unnecessary circumlocution, verbiage, or obscuring metaphor.
+
+At the end of five minutes she had reduced her visitor to a state of
+tearful compliance.
+
+At first her periods halted; but she soon got into her stride and swung
+along with obvious enjoyment.
+
+"My sister-in-law, not as she is my sister-in-law regler, Stitchley's
+father 'avin' married twice, 'is second bein' a widow with five of 'er
+own, an' 'er not twenty-nine at the time, reckless, I calls it. As I was
+sayin', Mrs. Coggles, 'er name's enough to give you a pain, an' the
+state of 'er 'ome, my dear----" Mrs. Stitchley raised her eyes to the
+ceiling as if words failed her.
+
+"Well," she continued after a momentary pause, during which Mrs. Bindle
+looked at her without moving a muscle, "as I was sayin', Mrs.
+Coggles"--she shuddered slightly as she pronounced the name--"she lives
+in Arloes Road, No. 9, pink tie-ups to 'er curtains she 'as, an' that
+flashy in 'er dress. Well, well!" she concluded, as if Christian
+charity had come to her aid.
+
+"She told me all about it. She was jest a-goin' to bed, bein' late on
+account of 'Ector, that's 'er seventh, ten months old an' still at the
+breast, disgustin' I calls it, 'avin' wot she thought was convulsions,
+an' 'earin' the row an' 'ubbub, she goes to the door an' sees
+everythink, an' that's the gospel truth, Mrs. Bindle, if I was to be
+struck down like Sulphira."
+
+She then proceeded to give a highly elaborated and ornate account of
+Bindle's adventure of some six weeks previously. She accompanied her
+story with a wealth of detail, most of which was inaccurate, coupled
+with the assurance that the Lord and Mrs. Stitchley would undoubtedly do
+all in their power to help Mrs. Bindle in her hour of trial.
+
+Finally, Mrs. Stitchley found herself walking down the little tiled path
+that led to the Bindles' outer gate, in her heart a sense of great
+injustice.
+
+"Never so much as bite or sup," she mumbled, as she turned out of the
+gate, taking care to leave it open, "and me a-tellin' 'er all wot I told
+'er. I've come across meanness in my time; but I never been refused a
+cup-o'-tea, an' me fatiguing myself something cruel to go an' tell 'er.
+I don't wonder he took up with that bit of a gal."
+
+That night she confided in her husband. "Stitchley," she said, "there
+ain't never smoke without fire, you mark my words," and Stitchley,
+glancing up from his newspaper, enquired what the 'ell she was gassing
+about; but she made no comment beyond emphasising, once more, that he
+was to mark her words.
+
+That afternoon, Mrs. Bindle worked with a vigour unusual even in her.
+She attacked the kitchen fire, hurled into the sink a flat-iron that had
+the temerity to get too hot, scrubbed boards that required no scrubbing,
+washed linoleum that was spotless, blackleaded where to blacklead was
+like painting the lily. In short, she seemed determined to exhaust her
+energies and her anger upon the helpless and inanimate things about her.
+
+From time to time there burst from her closed lips a sound as of one who
+has difficulty in holding back her pent-up feelings.
+
+At length, having cleaned everything that was cleanable, she prepared a
+cup-of-tea, which she drank standing. Then, removing her apron and
+taking her bonnet from the dresser-drawer, she placed it upon her head
+and adjusted the strings beneath her chin.
+
+Without waiting for any other garment, she left the house and made
+direct for Arloes Road.
+
+Twice she walked its length, subjecting to a careful scrutiny the house
+occupied by the Brungers, noting the windows with great care, and
+finding in them little to criticise. Then she returned to Fenton Street.
+
+The fact of having viewed the actual scene of Bindle's perfidy seemed to
+corroborate Mrs. Stitchley's story. Before the storm was to be permitted
+to burst, however, Mrs. Bindle intended to make assurance doubly sure
+by, as she regarded it in her own mind, "catching him at it."
+
+That night, she selected for her evening reading the chapter in the
+Bible which tells of the plagues of Egypt. Temporarily she saw herself
+in the roll of an outraged Providence, whilst for the part of Pharaoh
+she had cast Bindle, who, unaware of his impending doom, was explaining
+to Ginger at The Yellow Ostrich that a bigamist ought to be let off
+because "'e must be mad to 'ave done it."
+
+
+III
+
+Mrs. Bindle awaited the coming of Saturday evening with a grimness that
+caused Bindle more than once to regard her curiously. "There's somethink
+on the 'andle," he muttered prophetically; but as Mrs. Bindle made no
+sign and, furthermore, as she set before him his favourite dishes, he
+allowed speculation to become absorbed in appetite and enjoyment.
+
+It was characteristic of Mrs. Bindle that, Bindle being more than
+usually under a cloud, she should take extra care in the preparation of
+his meals. It was her way of emphasising the difference between them; he
+the erring husband, she the perfect wife.
+
+"I shan't be in to supper to-night, Lizzie," Bindle announced casually
+on the evening of what Mrs. Bindle had already decided was to be her day
+of wrath. He picked up his bowler-hat preparatory to making one of his
+lightning exits.
+
+"Where are you going?" she demanded, hoping to trap him in a lie.
+
+"When you gets yerself up dossy an' says you're goin' to chapel," he
+remarked, edging towards the door, "I says nothink at all, bein' a
+trustin' 'usband; so when I gets myself up ditto an' says I ain't goin'
+to chapel, you didn't ought to say nothink either, Mrs. B. Wot's sauce
+for the goose is----"
+
+"You're a bad, black-hearted man, Bindle, and you know it."
+
+The intensity of feeling with which the words were uttered surprised
+him.
+
+"Don't you think you can throw dust----" She stopped suddenly, then
+concluded, "You'd better be careful."
+
+"I am, Mrs. B.," he replied cheerily, "careful _as_ careful."
+
+Bindle had fallen into a habit of "dropping in" upon the Brungers on
+Saturday evenings, and for this purpose he had what he described as "a
+wash an' brush-up." This resolved itself into an entire change of
+raiment, as well as the customary "rinse" at the kitchen sink. This in
+itself confirmed Mrs. Stitchley's story.
+
+"Well, s'long," said Bindle, as he opened the kitchen door. "Keep the
+'ome fires burnin'," and with that he was gone.
+
+Bindle had learned from past experience that the more dramatic his exit
+the less likelihood there was of Mrs. Bindle scoring the final
+dialectical point.
+
+This evening, however, she had other and weightier matters for
+thought--and action. No sooner had the kitchen door closed than, moving
+swiftly across to the dresser, she pulled open a drawer, and drew out
+her dark brown mackintosh and bonnet. With swift, deft movements she
+drew on the one, and tied the strings of the other beneath her chin.
+Then, without waiting to look in the mirror over the mantelpiece, she
+passed into the passage and out of the hall door.
+
+She was just in time to see Bindle disappear round the corner. Without a
+moment's hesitation she followed.
+
+Unconscious that Mrs. Bindle, like Nemesis, was dogging his steps,
+Bindle continued his way until finally he turned into Arloes Road. On
+reaching the second lamp-post he gave vent to a peculiarly shrill
+whistle. As he opened the gate that led to a neat little house, the
+front door opened, and a young girl ran down the path and clasped his
+arm. It was obvious that she had been listening for the signal. A moment
+later they entered the house together.
+
+For a few seconds Mrs. Bindle stood at the end of the road, staring at
+the door that had closed behind them. Her face was white and set, and a
+grey line of grimness marked the spot where her lips had disappeared.
+She had noted that the girl was pretty, with fair hair that clung about
+her head in wanton little tendrils and, furthermore, that it was bound
+with a broad band of light green ribbon.
+
+"The villain!" she muttered between set teeth, as she turned and
+proceeded to retrace her steps. "I'll show him."
+
+Arrived back at Fenton Street, she went straight upstairs and proceeded
+to make an elaborate toilet. A little more than an hour later the front
+door once more closed behind her, and Mrs. Bindle proceeded upon her
+way, buttoning her painfully tight gloves, conscious that sartorially
+she was a triumph of completeness.
+
+
+IV
+
+"An' 'as 'er Nibs been a good gal all the week?" Bindle paused in the
+act of raising a glass of ale to his lips.
+
+"I have, mums, haven't I?" Elsie Brunger broke in, without giving her
+mother a chance to reply.
+
+Mrs. Brunger nodded. The question had caught her at a moment when her
+mouth was overfull of fried plaice and potatoes.
+
+"That's the ticket," said Bindle approvingly. "No bein' out late an'
+gettin' 'ome with the milk, or"--he paused impressively--"I gets another
+gal, see?"
+
+By this time Mrs. Brunger had reduced the plaice and potatoes to
+conversational proportions.
+
+"She's been helping me a lot in the house, too," she said from above a
+white silk blouse that seemed determined to show how much there really
+was of Mrs. Brunger.
+
+Elsie looked triumphantly across the supper-table at Bindle.
+
+"That's a good gal," said Bindle approvingly.
+
+"You've done her a lot of good, Mr. Bindle," said Mrs. Brunger, "and me
+and George are grateful, ain't we, George?"
+
+Mr. Brunger, a heavy-faced man with sad, lustreless eyes and a sallow
+skin, nodded. He was a man to whom speech came with difficulty, but on
+this occasion his utterance was constricted by a fish-bone lodged
+somewhere in the neighbourhood of the root of his tongue.
+
+"Wonderful 'ow all the gals take to me," remarked Bindle. "Chase me
+round gooseberry bushes, they do; anythink to get me."
+
+"You go on with you, do," laughed Mrs. Brunger. "How was I to know?"
+
+"I said I was a dove. You 'eard me, didn't you, Fluffy?" he demanded,
+turning to Elsie.
+
+"I won't be called Fluffy," she cried, in mock indignation. "You know I
+don't like it."
+
+"The man who goes about doin' wot a woman says she likes ain't goin' to
+get much jam," remarked Bindle oracularly.
+
+"Now, let's get cleared away, mother," remarked Mr. Brunger, speaking
+for the first time.
+
+"Oh, dad! don't you love your dominoes?" cried Elsie, jumping up and
+giving him a hug. "All right, mums and I will soon sound the 'All
+clear.' Come along, uncle, you butle." This to Bindle.
+
+Amidst much chatter and laughter the table was cleared, the red cloth
+spread in place of the white, and the domino-box reached down from the
+kitchen mantelpiece. The serious business of the evening had begun.
+
+Mr. Brunger had only one evening a week at home, and this he liked to
+divide between his family and his favourite game, giving the major part
+of his attention to the game.
+
+At one time he had been in the habit of asking in some friend or
+acquaintance to join him; but, since the arrival of Bindle, it had
+become an understood thing that the same quartette should meet each
+Saturday evening.
+
+Mrs. Brunger would make a pretence of crocheting. The product possessed
+one thing in common with the weaving of Penelope, in that it never
+seemed to make any appreciable progress towards completion.
+
+Mr. Brunger devoted himself to the rigours of the game, and Elsie would
+flutter between the two players, bursting, but never daring, to give the
+advice that her superior knowledge made valuable.
+
+Bindle kept the party amused, that is, except Mr. Brunger, who was too
+wrapped up in the bone parallelograms before him to be conscious of
+anything else.
+
+Elsie would as soon have thought of missing her Sunday dinner as those
+Saturday evenings, and Mrs. Brunger soon found that a new and powerful
+weapon had been thrust into her hand.
+
+"Very well, you go to bed at seven on Saturday," she would say, which
+was inevitably followed by an "Oh, mums!" of contrition and docility.
+
+"Out! You're beaten, uncle," cried Elsie, clapping her hands, and
+enjoying the look of mock mortification with which Bindle regarded the
+dominoes before him.
+
+Mr. Brunger leaned back in his chair, an expression of mild triumph
+modifying his heavily-jowled countenance. It was remarkable how
+consistently Mr. Brunger was victor.
+
+At that moment a loud and peremptory rat-tat-tat sounded down the
+passage.
+
+"Now, I wonder who that is." Mrs. Brunger put down her crochet upon the
+table and rose.
+
+"Don't you bring anyone in here, mother," ordered Mr. Brunger, fearful
+that his evening was to be spoiled, as he began to mix the dominoes.
+There was no music so dear to his soul as their click-clack, as they
+brushed shoulders with one another.
+
+Mrs. Brunger left the room and, carefully closing the door behind her,
+passed along the short passage and opened the door.
+
+"I've come for my husband!"
+
+On the doorstep stood Mrs. Bindle, grim as Fate. Her face was white, her
+eyes hard, and her mouth little more than indicated by a line of shadow
+between her closely pressed lips. The words seemed to strike Mrs.
+Brunger dumb.
+
+"Your--your husband?" she repeated at length.
+
+"Yes, my 'usband." Mrs. Bindle's diction was losing its purity and
+precision under the stress of great emotion. "I know 'e's here. Don't
+you deny it. I saw 'im come. Oh, you wicked woman!"
+
+Mrs. Brunger blinked in her bewilderment. She was taken by surprise at
+the suddenness of the assault; but her temper was rising under this
+insulting and unprovoked attack.
+
+"What's that you call me?" she demanded.
+
+"Taking a woman's lawful wedded 'usband----" began Mrs. Bindle, when she
+was interrupted by Mrs. Brunger.
+
+"Here, come in," she cried, mindful that inside the house only those on
+either side could hear, whereas on the doorstep their conversation would
+be the property of the whole street.
+
+Mrs. Bindle followed Mrs. Brunger into the parlour. For a moment the two
+women were silent, whilst Mrs. Brunger found the matches, lighted the
+gas, and lowered the blind.
+
+"Now, what's the matter with you? What's your trouble?" demanded Mrs.
+Brunger, with suppressed passion. "Out with it."
+
+"I want my 'usband," repeated Mrs. Bindle, a little taken aback by the
+fierceness of the onslaught.
+
+"An' what have I got to do with your husband, I should like to know?"
+
+"He's here. You're encouraging him, leading him away from----" Mrs.
+Bindle paused.
+
+"Leadin' him away from what?" demanded Mrs. Brunger.
+
+"From me!"
+
+"Leadin' him away, am I?--leadin' him away, I think you said?" Mrs.
+Brunger placed a hand on either hip and thrust her face forward, causing
+Mrs. Bindle involuntarily to start back.
+
+"Oh! you needn't be afraid. I'm not goin' to hit you. Leadin' him away
+was what you said." Mrs. Brunger paused dramatically, and leaned back
+slightly, as if to get a more comprehensive view of her antagonist.
+"Well, he must be a pretty damn short-sighted fool to want leadin' away
+from a thing like you. I'd run hell-hard if I was him."
+
+The biting scorn of the words, the insultingly contemptuous tone in
+which they were uttered, for a moment seemed to daze Mrs. Bindle; but
+only for a breathing space.
+
+Making a swift recovery, she turned upon her antagonist a stream of
+accusation and reproach.
+
+She told how a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel had witnessed
+the return of Bindle the night of the altercation in the front garden.
+She accused mother and daughter of unthinkable crimes, bringing
+Scriptural quotation to her aid.
+
+She confused Fulham and Hammersmith with Sodom and Gomorrah. She called
+upon an all-seeing Providence to purge the district in general, and
+Arloes Road in particular, of its pestilential populace.
+
+She traced the descent of Mrs. Brunger down generations of infamy and
+sin. She threatened her with punishment in this world and the next. She
+told of Bindle's neglect and wickedness, and cast him out into the
+tooth-gnashing darkness. She trampled him under foot, arranged that
+Providence should spurn him and his associates, and consign them all to
+eternal and fiery damnation.
+
+Gradually she worked herself up into a frenzy of hysterical invective.
+Little points of foam formed at the corners of her mouth. Her bonnet
+had slipped off backwards, and hung by its strings round her neck. Her
+right-hand glove of biscuit brown had split across the palm.
+
+Mrs. Bindle had lost all control of herself.
+
+"He's here! He's here! I saw him come! You Jezebel! You're hiding him;
+but I'll find him. I'll find him. You--you----"
+
+With a wild, hysterical scream, she darted to the door, tore it open,
+dashed along the passage, and burst into the kitchen.
+
+"So I've caught you with the Jez----" She stopped as if petrified.
+
+Mr. Brunger had just played his last domino, and was sitting back in his
+chair in triumph. Elsie, one arm round her father's neck, was laughing
+derisively at Bindle, who sat gazing with comical concern at five
+dominoes standing on their sides facing him.
+
+All three heads jerked round, and three pairs of widened eyes gazed at
+the dishevelled, white-faced figure, standing looking down at them with
+the light of madness in its eyes.
+
+"Oo-er!" gasped Elsie, as her arms tightened round her father's neck,
+almost strangling him.
+
+"Grrrrmp," choked Mr. Brunger, dropping his pipe on to his knees.
+
+Bindle started up, overturning his chair in the movement. His eyes were
+blazing, his lips were set in a firm line, and his hands were clenched
+convulsively at his sides.
+
+"You--you get out of 'ere!" the words seemed to burst from him
+involuntarily, "or----"
+
+For one bewildered moment, Mrs. Bindle stared at him, in her eyes a look
+in which surprise and fear seemed to strive for mastery. Her gaze
+wandered on to the frightened girl clutching her father round the neck,
+and then back to Bindle. She turned as suddenly as she had entered,
+cannoned off Mrs. Brunger, who stood behind her, and stumbled blindly
+along the passage out into the street.
+
+Mrs. Brunger followed, and closed the front-door behind her. When she
+returned to the kitchen, Bindle had picked up his chair and resumed his
+seat. His hands were trembling slightly, and he was very white.
+
+"She--she ain't been well lately," he muttered huskily. "I----"
+
+"Now, mother, where's the beer? I'm feeling a bit thirsty;" and after
+this unusually lengthy speech, Mr. Brunger proceeded to shuffle the
+dominoes with an almost alarming vigour, whilst Elsie, wonder-eyed and a
+little pale, sat on the arm of her father's chair glancing covertly at
+Bindle.
+
+That night, when he returned home, Bindle found laid out on the kitchen
+table, a bottle of beer, a glass, two pieces of bread and butter, a
+piece of cheese and a small dish of pickled onions.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered, at the sight of this unusual attention.
+"Wonders'll never cease," and he proceeded to unscrew the stopper of the
+beer-bottle.
+
+The incident of the Brungers was never subsequently referred to between
+them; but Mrs. Bindle gave herself no rest until she had unmasked the
+cause of all the trouble.
+
+Mrs. Stitchley was persuaded to see the reason why she should withdraw
+from the Alton Road Chapel Temperance Society, the reason being a
+half-quartern bottle of gin, from which she was caught imbibing at a
+magic-lantern entertainment,--and it was Mrs. Bindle who caught her.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Punctuation has been normalized. On page 245, the
+word "mumured" in the original text has been changed to "murmured".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Bindle, by Hebert Jenkins
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