Bindle was grinning comfortably at the thought of the days it would take to sort out the horses and vehicles, when he saw in the distance a bicycle being ridden by someone obviously in a hurry.
As it came nearer he recognised the rider as Dick Little, who pedalled up beside the van and tendered a sovereign to Bindle.
"No, sir," Bindle remarked, shaking his head. "I'm a bit of a sport myself. Lord! wasn't they drunk!" He chuckled quietly. "That young parson chap, too. No, sir, I been paid in fun."
After a somewhat lengthy discussion carried on in whispers, so that the driver should not hear, Bindle suggested that Dick Little had better come inside the van, as if anyone were to see them it might result in suspicion.
"Yer seem to like a little joke," he added. "I can tell yer about some as won't make yer want to cry."
An hour later, when Dick Little hunched his bicycle from the tail of the van he said:
"Well, come and see me in London; I'm generally in Sunday evenings."
"Right, sir; I will," replied Bindle; "but might I arst, sir, wot it was that made 'em so fidgety?"
"It was pure alcohol mixed with distilled mead," was the reply.
"Well, it done the trick. Good-night, sir. Lord! won't there be some 'eads wantin' 'oldin' in the mornin'," and he laughed joyously as the pantechnicon rumbled noisily Londonwards.
Mrs. Bindle had just returned from evening chapel. On Sundays, especially on Sunday evenings, when there had been time for the cumulative effect of her devotions to manifest itself, Mrs. Bindle was always in a chastened mood. She controlled those gusts of temper which plunged her back into the Doric and precipitated Bindle "into 'ell, dust an' all."
On this particular evening she was almost gentle. The bangs with which she accentuated the placing of each plate and dish upon the table were _piano_ bangs, and Bindle duly noted the circumstance.
With him Sunday was always a day of intellectual freedom. He aired his views more freely on that than on other days.
Having laid the supper, Mrs. Bindle began to remove her bonnet. With a hat-pin in her mouth and her hands stretched behind her head in the act of untying an obstreperous veil that rested like a black line across the bridge of her nose, she remarked, in that casual tone which with her betokened an item of great interest and importance: