"When you talk sense, perhaps I can understand you."
"My dinner," he explained with an injured air.
"When you"ve done a day"s work you"ll get a day"s dinner, and not before."
"But the strike"s orf."
"So"s the lock-out."
"But----"
"Don"t stand there "b.u.t.ting" me. Go and do some work, then you"ll have something to eat," and Mrs. Bindle reversed the pillow-case she was ironing, and got in a straight right full in the centre of it, whilst Bindle turned gloomily to the door and made his way to The Yellow Ostrich, where, over a pint of beer and some bread and cheese, he gloomed his discontent.
"No more strikes for me," said a man seated opposite, who was similarly engaged.
"Same "ere," said Bindle.
"Bob Cunham got a flea in "is ear this mornin" wot "e"s been askin"
for," said the man, and Bindle, nodding in agreement, buried his face in his pewter.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hopton was explaining to a few personal friends how it all had happened.
"She done good work in startin" of us orf," was her tribute to Mrs.
Bindle; "but I can"t say I takes to her as a friend."
CHAPTER II
MRS. BINDLE"S WASHING-DAY
I
Shoooooooossssh!
Like a silver flash, the contents of a water-jug descended upon the back of the moth-eaten sandy cat, engaged in excavating Mrs. Bindle"s geranium-bed.
A curve of yellow, and Mrs. Sawney"s "Sandy" had taken the dividing wall between No. 7 and No. 9 in one movement--and the drama was over.
Mrs. Bindle closed her parlour-window. She refilled the jug, placing it ready for the next delinquent and then returned to her domestic duties.
On the other side of a thin part.i.tioning wall, Mrs. Sawney left the window from which she had viewed her cat"s attack upon Mrs. Bindle"s geranium-bed, and Mrs. Bindle"s counter-attack upon Sandy"s person.
Pa.s.sing into the small pa.s.sage she opened the front door, her lips set in a determined line.
"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," she called, in accents that caused Sandy, now three gardens away, to pause in the act of shaking his various members one by one, in an endeavour to disembarra.s.s himself of the contents of Mrs. Bindle"s water-jug.
"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," cooed Mrs. Sawney. "Poor p.u.s.s.y."
The tone of his mistress" voice rendered Sandy suspicious as to her intentions. He was a cat who had fought his way from kittenhood to a three-year-old, and that with the loss of nothing more conspicuous than the tip of his left ear. He could not remember the time when he had not been engaged in warfare, either predatory or defensive, and he had acc.u.mulated much wisdom in the process.
"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. Puss, puss, puss." Mrs. Sawney"s tone grew in mellowness as her anger increased. "Poor p.u.s.s.y."
With a final shake of his near hind leg, Sandy put two more gardens between himself and that voice, and proceeded to d.a.m.n to-morrow"s weather by washing clean over his right ear.
Mrs. Sawney closed her front-door and retired to the regions that knew her best. In her heart was a great anger. Water had been thrown over her cat, an act which, according to Mrs. Sawney"s code of ethics, const.i.tuted a personal affront.
It was Monday, and with Mrs. Sawney the effect of the Monday-morning feeling, coupled with the purifying of the domestic linen, was a sore trial to her never very philosophical nature.
"To-morrow"ll be _"er_ washing-day," she muttered, as she poked down the clothes in the bubbling copper with a long stick, bleached and furred by constant immersion in boiling water. "I"ll show "er, throwing water over my cat, the stuck-up baggage!"
Late that afternoon, she called upon Mrs. Grimps, who lived at No. 5, to return the scrubbing-board she had borrowed that morning. With Mrs.
Sawney, to borrow was to manifest the qualities of neighbourliness, and one of her grievances against Mrs. Bindle was that she was "too stuck up to borrow a pin."
Had Sandy heard the sentiments that fell from his mistress"s lips that afternoon, and had he not been the Ulysses among cats that he undoubtedly was, he would have become convinced that a new heaven or a new earth was in prospect. As it was, Sandy was two streets away, engaged in an affair with a lady of piebald appearance and coy demeanour.
When, half an hour later, Mrs. Sawney returned to No. 9, her expression was even more grim. The sight of the pink tie-ups with which the white lace curtains at No. 7 were looped back, rendered her forgetful of her recently expressed sentiments. She sent Sandy at express speed from her sight, and soundly boxed Harriet"s ears. Mrs. Sawney was annoyed.
II
All her life Mrs. Bindle had been exclusive. She prided herself upon the fact that she was never to be seen gossiping upon doorstep, or at garden-gate. In consequence, she was regarded as "a stuck-up cat"; she called it keeping herself to herself.
Another cause of her unpopularity with the housewives of Fenton Street was the way she stared at their windows as she pa.s.sed. There was in that look criticism and disdain, and it inspired her neighbours with fury, the more so because of their impotence.
Mrs. Bindle judged a woman by her windows--and by the same token condemned her. Fenton Street knew it, and treasured up the memory.
It was this att.i.tude towards their windows, more than Mrs. Bindle"s exclusiveness in the matter of front-door, or back-door gossip, that made for her unpopularity with those among whom circ.u.mstances and the jerry-builder had ordained that she should spend her days. She regarded it as a virtue not to be on speaking terms with anyone in the street.
For the most part, Mrs. Bindle and her immediate neighbours lived in a state of armed neutrality. On the one side was Mrs. Sawney, a lath of a woman with an insatiable appet.i.te for scandal and the mouth of a scold, whose windows were, in Mrs. Bindle"s opinion, a disgrace; on the other was Mrs. Grimps, a big, jolly-looking woman, who laughed loudly at things, about which Mrs. Bindle did not even permit herself to think.
In spite of the armistice that prevailed, there were occasions when slumbering dislike would develop into open hostilities. The strategy employed was almost invariably the same, just as were the forces engaged.
These encounters generally took place on Tuesdays, Mrs. Bindle"s washing-day. To a woman, Fenton Street washed on Monday, and the fact of Mrs. Bindle selecting Tuesday for the cleansing her household linen was, in the eyes of other housewives, a direct challenge. It was an endeavour to vaunt her own superiority, and Fenton Street, despite its c.o.c.kney good-nature, found it impossible to forgive what it regarded as "sw.a.n.k".
The result was that occasionally Fenton Street gave tongue, sometimes through the medium of its offspring; at others from the lips of the women themselves.
Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had conceived a clever strategy, which never failed in its effect upon their victim. On Mrs. Bindle"s washing-days, when hostilities had been decided on, Mrs. Grimps would go up to the back-bedroom window, whilst Mrs. Sawney would stand at her back-door, or conversely. From these positions, the fences being low, they had an excellent view of the back garden of No. 7, and would carry on a conversation, the subject of which would be Mrs. Bindle, or the garments she was exposing to the public gaze.
The two women seemed to find a never-ending source of interest in their neighbour"s laundry. Being intensely refined in all such matters, Mrs.
Bindle subjected her weekly wash to a strict censorship, drying the more intimate garments before the kitchen fire. This evoked frankly-expressed speculation between her two enemies as to how anyone could live without change of clothing.
In her heart, Mrs. Bindle had come to dislike, almost to dread, washing-days, although she in no way mitigated her uncompromising att.i.tude towards her neighbours.
When, on the Wednesday morning following one of these one-sided battles, Mrs. Bindle went out shopping, her glances at the front-windows of Mrs.
Grimps"s house, or those of Mrs. Sawney, according to the direction she took, were steadier and more critical than ever. Mrs. Bindle was not one to strike her flag to the enemy.
Soon after nine on the Tuesday morning after Sandy had const.i.tuted himself a casus belli, Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery carrying a basketful of clothes, on the top of which lay a handful of clothes-pegs.