stood Mrs. Bindle, tight-lipped and grim.

"That Bindle's done this," she muttered to herself. "It'll kill Mr.
Hearty."

CHAPTER VI

MR. GUPPERDUCK'S MISHAP

"I've been out all day waiting in queues," remarked Mrs. Bindle
complainingly, "and all I got was two candles and a quarter of a pound
of marjarine."

"An' which are we goin' to 'ave for breakfast to-morrow?" enquired
Bindle cheerfully.

"Yes, a lot you care!" retorted Mrs. Bindle, "coming home regular to
your meals and expecting them to be ready, and then sitting down and
eating. A lot you care!" she repeated.

"Wot jer want to take a lodger for," demanded Bindle, "if you can't
get food enough for you an' me?"

"Doesn't his money help us pay our way?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.

"But wot's the good of 'avin' more money, Mrs. B., if you can't get
enough food to go round?"

"That's right, go on!" stormed Mrs. Bindle. "A lot of sympathy I get
from you, a lot you care about me walking myself off my feet, so long
as your stomach's full."

Bindle scratched his head in perplexity, but forbore to retort;
instead he hummed Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn "Gospel Bells."

"Look what you done to Mr. Hearty, that Saturday," cried Mrs. Bindle.

"Me!" said Bindle, cursing himself for reminding her by humming the
hymn.

"Yes, you!" was the reply. "He had to go to the police-court."

"Well, it's made 'is fortune, an' 'e got orf," replied Bindle.

"Yes, but it might have ruined him. You wouldn't have cared, and in
war-time too," Mrs. Bindle added.

"Well, well! the war'll be over some day," said Bindle cheerfully.

"That's what you always say. Why don't they make peace?" demanded Mrs.
Bindle, as if Bindle himself were the sole obstacle to the
tranquillisation of the world. Mrs. Bindle sat down with a
decisiveness that characterised all her movements.

"Sometimes I wish I was dead," she remarked. "There's nothin' but
inching and pinching and slaving my fingers to the bone trying to make
a shilling go further than it will, and yet they won't make peace."

"Mrs. B.," remarked Bindle, "you best keep to cookin', you're a dab at
that, and leave politics to them wot understands 'em. You can't catch
a mad dog by puttin' salt on 'is tail. I wonder where ole Guppy is,"
he continued, glancing at the kitchen clock, which pointed to
half-past nine. "It ain't often 'e lets praying get in the way of 'is
meals."

"I hope nothing has happened to him," remarked Mrs. Bind