ive 'em
some nasty jars in 'eaven now and then."

Bindle rose, produced from his pocket the tin of salmon that inevitably
accompanied any endeavour on his part to stand up to Mrs. Bindle, then
picking up a jug from the dresser he went out to fetch the supper beer,
striving at one and the same time to do justice to "Gospel Bells" and
his cigar.

CHAPTER IV

THE HEARTYS AT HOME

The atmosphere of the Hearty menage was one of religious gloom. To Mr.
Hearty laughter and a smiling face were the attributes of the ungodly.
He never laughed himself, and his smile was merely the baring of a
handful of irregular yellow teeth, an action that commenced and ended
with such suddenness as to cast some doubt upon its spontaneity.

He possessed only two interests in life--business and the chapel, and
one dread--his wife's brother-in-law, Joseph Bindle. As business was
not a thing he cared to discuss with his wife or eighteen-year-old
daughter, Millie, the one topic of conversation left was the chapel.

Mr. Hearty was a spare man of medium height, with a heavy moustache,
iron-grey mutton-chop whiskers, and a woolly voice.

"I never see a chap wi' whiskers like that wot wasn't as 'oly as oil,"
was Bindle's opinion.

Mr. Hearty was negative in everything save piety. His ideal in life
was to temporise and placate, and thus avoid anything in the nature of
a dispute or altercation.

"If 'Earty's goin' to be a favourite in 'eaven," Bindle had once said
to Mrs. Bindle, "I don't think much of 'eaven's taste in men. 'E can't
'it nothink, either with 'is fist or 'is tongue."

"If you was more like him," Mrs. Bindle had retorted, "you might wear a
top hat on Sundays, same as he does."

"Me in a top 'at!" Bindle had cried. "'Oly Moses! I can see it! Why,
my ears ain't big enough to 'old it up. Wot 'ud I do if there was an
'igh wind blowin'? I'd spend all Sunday a-chasin' it up and down the
street, like an ole woman after a black 'en."

Bindle himself was far from being pugnacious; but his conception of
manhood was that it should be ready to hit any head that wanted
hitting. He had been known to fight men much bigger than himself, not
because he personally had any dispute to settle with them, but rather
from an abstract sense of the fitness of things. Once when a man was
mercilessly beating a horse Bindle intervened, and a fight had ensued,
which had ended only when both parties were too exhausted to continue.

"Blim