he van, and Wilkes clambered down
from the roof, and two weary horses were conscious of nearly a quarter
of a ton less weight to haul up a tiring hill. Bindle was too popular
with his mates for them to refuse him so simple a request as walking
up a hill.

On Bindle's head was the inevitable cricket cap of alternate triangles
of blue and white, which exposure to all sorts of weather had
rendered into two shades of grey. He wore his green baize apron, his
nose was as cheery and ruddy and his smile as persistent as ever. At
the corners of his mouth were those twitches that he seemed unable to
control. To Bindle, existence meant opportunity. As he saw it, each
new day might be a day of great happenings, of some supreme joke. To
him a joke was the anaesthetic which enabled him to undergo the
operation of life.

Blessed with a wife to whom religion was the be-all and end-all of
existence, he had once remarked to her, after an eloquent exhortation
on her part to come on the side of the Lord, "Wot should I do in
'eaven, Lizzie? I never 'eard of an angel wot was able to see a joke,
and they'd jest 'oof me out. 'Eaven's a funny place, an' I can't be
funny in their way. I got to go on as I was made."

"If you was to smile more, Ginger," remarked Bindle presently, "you'd
find that life wouldn't 'urt so much. If you can grin you can bear
anythink, even Mrs. B., an' she takes a bit o' bearin'."

As the three men trudged up Putney Hill beside the sweating horses,
Bindle beamed, Ginger grumbled, and Wilkes coughed. Wilkes was always
coughing. Wilkes found expression in his cough. He could cough
laughter, scorn, or anger. As he was always coughing, life would
otherwise have been intolerable. He was a man of few words, and, as
Bindle phrased it, "When Wilkie ain't coughin', 'e's thinkin'; an' as
it 'urts 'im to think, 'e coughs."

Ginger was sincere in his endeavour to discover objects he didn't
"'old wiv"; marriage, temperance drinks, Mr. Asquith, twins and women
were some of the things that Ginger found it impossible to reconcile
with the beneficent decrees of Providence.

After a particularly lengthy bout of coughing on the part of Wilkes,
Bindle remarked to Ginger, "Wilkie's cough is about the only thing I
never 'eard you say you don't 'old wiv, Ginger."

"'E can't 'elp it," was Ginger's reply.

"No more can't women 'elp twins," Bindle responded.

"I don't 'old wiv twins," was Ginger's gloomy reply. He disliked being
remi