ndle 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:

"Mr. Hearty prayed for you to-night, Bindle."

Bindle sat up in his chair as if he had been shot.

"'Earty wot?" he interrogated, with unaccustomed anger in his voice,
and an unwonted flash in his eye. "'Earty wot?"

"He prayed for you," replied Mrs. Bindle in what was for her a hushed
voice; "a beautiful prayer about a brother who had fallen by the
wayside, a wheat-ear among thorns."

"'_E_ prayed for _me--'im_?"

Bindle removed his pipe from his mouth, and gripping the bowl between
thumb and finger, pointed what remained of the stem at Mrs. Bindle, as
she stuck a hat-pin through her bonnet and placed it on the dresser.

"'_E_ prayed for _me_?" The words came with such deliberation and
intensity that Mrs. Bindle glanced round sharply.

"Yes!" she snapped, "an' you want it. You're nothin' but an 'eathen."
Mrs. Bindle was forgetting her careful articulation.

"A brother fallen by the roadside----"

"Wayside," corrected Mrs. Bindle, as she banged a loaf on the table.

"A brother 'oo 'as fallen by the wayside, a wheat-ear among thorns,"
murmured Bindle as if to himself. Suddenly he grinned; the humour of
the thing seemed to strike him. "Prayed for in church--leastwise
chapel--jest like the Royal Family an' rain. You're comin' on, Joe
Bindle," he chuckled.

"Seems to amuse you," remarked Mrs. Bindle as she took her place at the
table.

"Yer've 'it it," replied Bindle, as he skilfully opened the tin of
salmon. "Yer've just 'it it. Alfred 'Earty was sent to annoy 'eaven
with 'is 'ymns and tickle up Joe Bindle with 'is prayers."

"If you was more like what he is, you'd be a better man."

"'Earty is as 'Earty does," flashed Bindle with a grin. Then after a
pause to enable him to reduce a particularly large mouthful of bread
and salmon to conversational proportions, he continued:

"If I 'ad the runnin' of this 'ere world, there'd be some rather big
alterations, with a sort of 'end o' the season' sale, an' there'd be