Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles. Jenkins Herbert George

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