the end
of his journey--that was with luck; but, luck or no luck, Mrs. Bindle
was inevitable.

"Funny 'ow 'avin' a wife seems to spoil yer appetite," he muttered, as
he scratched his head through the blue-and-white cricket cap he
invariably wore, where the four triangles of alternating white and
Cambridge blue had lost much of their original delicacy of shade.

"I'm 'ungry, 'ungry as an 'awk," he continued; then after a pause he
added, "I wonder whether 'awks marry." The idea seemed to amuse him.
"Well, well!" he remarked with a sigh, "yer got to face it, Joe," and
pulling himself together he mended his pace.

As he had foreseen, Mrs. Bindle was keenly on the alert for the sound
of his key in the lock of the outer door of their half-house. He had
scarcely realised that the evening meal was to consist of something
stewed with his much-loved onions, when Mrs. Bindle's voice was heard
from the kitchen with the time-worn question:

"Got a job?"

Hunger, and the smell of his favourite vegetable, made him a coward.

"'Ow jer know, Fairy?" he asked with crude facetiousness.

"What is it?" enquired Mrs. Bindle shrewdly as he entered the kitchen.

"Night watchman at a garridge," he lied glibly, and removed his coat
preparatory to what he called a "rinse" at the sink. It always pleased
Mrs. Bindle to see Bindle wash; even such a perfunctory effort as a
"rinse" was a tribute to her efforts.

"When d'you start?" she asked suspiciously.

How persistent women were! thought Bindle.

"To-night at nine," he replied. Nothing mattered with that savoury
smell in his nostrils.

Mrs. Bindle was pacified; but her emotions were confidential affairs
between herself and "the Lord," and she consequently preserved the same
unrelenting exterior.

"'Bout time, I should think," she snapped ungraciously, and proceeded
with her culinary preparations. Mrs. Bindle was an excellent cook.
"If 'er temper was like 'er cookin'," Bindle had confided to Mrs.
Hearty, "life 'ud be a little bit of 'eaven."

Fenton Street, in which the Bindles lived, was an offering to the
Moloch of British exclusiveness. The houses consisted of two floors,
and each floor had a separate outer door and a narrow passage from
which opened off a parlour, a bedroom, and a kitchen. Although each
household was cut off from the sight of its immediate neighbours, there
was not a resident, save those who occupied the end houses, who was not
intimately acquainted wit