sn't smoke," she explained.

"But I ain't goin' to give up tobacco," said Bindle with decision.
"'Oly Angels! me with a wife an a lodger an' no pipe!"

He looked about him as if in search of sympathy. Then turning to Mrs.
Bindle, he demanded:

"You mean to say I got to give up smokin' for a lodger!" Indignation
had smoothed out the wrinkles round his eyes and stilled the
twitchings at the corners of his mouth.

"It doesn't matter after he's here," Mrs. Bindle responded sagely.

Slowly the set-expression vanished from Bindle's face; the wrinkles
and twitches returned, and he breathed a sigh of elaborate relief.

"Mrs. B.," he said admiringly, "you 'aven't lived for nineteen years
with your awful wedded 'usband, lovin', 'onourin' an' obeyin' 'im--I
don't think--without learnin' a thing or two." He winked knowingly.

"Yes," he continued, apparently addressing a fly upon the ceiling,
"we'll catch our lodger first an' smoke 'im afterwards, all of which
is good business. Funny 'ow religion never seems to make you too
simple to----"

Bindle was interrupted by a knocking at the outer-door. Mrs. Bindle
performed a series of movements with amazing celerity. She removed and
folded her kitchen-apron, placing it swiftly in the dresser-drawer,
gave a hasty glance in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece to
assure herself that all was well with her personal appearance and,
finally, slipped into the parlour to light the gas. She was out again
in a second and, as she passed into the passage leading to the
outer-door, she threw back at Bindle the one word "Remember," pregnant
with as much meaning as that uttered two and a half centuries before
in Whitehall.

"Nippy on 'er feet is Mrs. B.," muttered Bindle admiringly, as he
listened intently to the murmur of voices and the sound of footsteps
in the passage. Presently the parlour-door closed and then--silence.

Bindle fidgeted about the kitchen. He was curious as to what was
taking place in the parlour and, above all, what manner of man the
prospective lodger would turn out to be. He picked up the evening
paper, endeavouring to read what the Austrian Prime Minister thought
of the prospects of peace, what Berlin thought of the Austrian Prime
Minister, what the Kaiser thought of the Almighty, and what the
Almighty was permitted to think of the Kaiser. But international
politics and the War had lost their interest. Bindle was conscious
that he was on the eve of a crisis in his ho