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

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