t yer meals
ready," snapped Mrs. Bindle. "One o' these days you'll come 'ome and
find me gone."

"'Oo's the man?" interrogated Bindle with a temerity that surprised
himself.

That night Bindle lay awake for some time thinking over life in general
and the events of the evening in particular. He never could quite
understand why he had been precipitated into an atmosphere so foreign
to his nature as that surrounding Mrs. Bindle and Mr. Hearty. He had
striven very hard to stem the tide of religious gloom as it spread
itself over Mrs. Bindle. Unaware of the cause, he not unnaturally
selected the wrong methods, which were those of endeavouring to make
her "cheer up."

"The idea of goin' to 'eaven seems to make her low-spirited," was
Bindle's view.

Even Mrs. Bindle was not entirely proof against his sallies, and there
were times when a reluctant smile would momentarily relieve the grim
severity of her features. There were occasions even when they chatted
quite amiably, until the recollection of Mr. Hearty, and the mental
comparison of his success with Bindle's failure, threw her back into
the slough from which she had temporarily been rescued.

"There must be somethink funny about me," Bindle had once confided to
Mrs. Hearty. "My father was as religious as a woman wi' one leg, then
I gets Lizzie an' she turns away from me an' 'Mammon'--I don't rightly
know 'oo 'e is, but she's always talkin' about 'im--then you goes back
on me an' gives me a sort of brother-in-law 'oo's as 'oly as ointment.
You ain't been a real pal, Martha, really you ain't."

If called upon to expound his philosophy of life Bindle would have
found himself in difficulties. He was a man whose sympathies were
quickly aroused, and it never troubled him whether the object of his
charity were a heathen, a Christian, or a Mormon. On one occasion when
a girl had been turned out of doors at night by an outraged father who
had discovered his daughter's frailty, it was Bindle who found her
weeping convulsively near Putney Pier. It was he who secured her a
night's lodging, and stood her friend throughout the troubled weeks
that followed, although it meant neither beer nor tobacco for some
months.

On another occasion a mate had been ill, and it was Bindle who each
week collected what pence he could from his fellow-workmen and made up
from his own pocket the amount necessary to keep the man, his wife, and
child. To do this he had done work as a white