ts predestined path.
Although an entire stranger to philosophy, ignorant alike of the word
and its meaning, Mrs. Bindle had arrived at the same conclusion as the
French savant.

"Why don't you stick at somethin' as if you meant it?" was her way of
phrasing it. "Look at Mr. Hearty. See what he's done!" Without any
thought of irreverence, Mrs. Bindle used the names of the Lord and Mr.
Hearty as whips of scorpions with which on occasion she mercilessly
scourged her husband.

At the time of Bindle's encounter with his onetime work-mate, Ginger,
he had been tramping for hours seeking a job. He had gone even to the
length of answering an advertisement for a waitress, explaining to the
irritated advertiser that "wi' women it was the customers as did the
waitin'," and that a man was "more nippy than a gal."

Ginger's hospitality had cheered him, and he began to regard life once
more with his accustomed optimism. He had been without food all day,
and this fact, rather than the continued rebuffs he had suffered,
caused him some misgiving as the hour approached for his return to home
and Mrs. Bindle's inevitable question, "Got a job?"

As he passed along the Fulham Palace Road his keen eye searched
everywhere for interest and amusement. He winked jocosely at the
pretty girls, and grinned happily when called a "saucy 'ound." He
exchanged pleasantries with anyone who showed the least inclination
towards camaraderie, and the dour he silenced with caustic rejoinder.

Bindle's views upon the home life of England were not orthodox.

"I'd like to meet the cove wot first started talkin' about the ''appy
'ome life of ole England,'" he murmured under his breath. "I'd like to
introduce 'im to Mrs. B. Might sort o' wake 'im up a bit, an' make 'im
want t' emigrate. I'd like to see 'im gettin' away wi'out a scrap.
Rummy thing, 'ome life."

His philosophy was to enjoy what you've got, and not to bother about
what you hope to get. He had once precipitated a domestic storm by
saying to Mrs. Bindle:

"Don't you put all yer money on the next world, in case of accidents.
Angels is funny things, and they might sort of take a dislike to yer,
and then the fat 'ud be in the fire." Then, critically surveying Mrs.
Bindle's manifest leanness, "Not as you an' me together 'ud make much
of a flicker in 'ell."

As he approached Fenton Street, where he lived, his leisurely pace
perceptibly slackened. It was true that supper awaited him at