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 partitioning 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.
Passing into the small passage 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 disembarrass himself of the
contents of Mrs. Bindle's water-jug.
"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," cooed Mrs. Sawney. "Poor pussy."
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
accumulated much wisdom in the process.
"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. Puss, puss, puss." Mrs. Sawney's tone grew
in mellowness as her anger increased. "Poor pussy."
With a final shake of his near hind leg, Sandy put two more gardens
between himself and that voice, and proceeded to damn 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,
constituted 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 passed. 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 attitude 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 circumstances 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 appetite 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 cockney
good-nature, found it impossible to forgive what it regarded as "swank".
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
attitude 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 constituted
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.
Placing the basket on the ground, she proceeded to wipe with a cloth the
clothes-line, which Bindle had put up before breakfast.
The sight of her neat, angular form in the garden was the signal for
Mrs. Grimps to come to her back door, whilst Mrs. Sawney ascended her
stairs. A moment later, the back window of No. 9 was thrown up with a
flourish, and the hard face of Sandy's mistress appeared.
It was a curious circumstance that, although there was never any
pre-arrangement, Mrs. Sawney always seemed to appear at the window just
as Mrs. Grimps emerged from her back door, or the order would be
reversed. Never had they been known both to appear together, either at
window or at door. Their mutual understanding seemed to be that of the
ancient pair in the old-fashioned weather-indicator.
"Good morning, Mrs. Grimps," called Mrs. Sawney from her post of
vantage.
"Good morning, Mrs. Sawney," responded Mrs. Grimps. "Beautiful day,
ain't it?"
"Fine dryin' weather," responded Mrs. Sawney.
"I see you got your washin' finished early yes'day."
"Yes, an' a rare lot there was this week," said Mrs. Sawney, settling
her arms comfortably upon the window-sill. "You 'ad a tidy bit, too, I
see."
"Yes," replied Mrs. Grimps, picking a back-tooth with a hair-pin. "Mr.
Grimps is like Mr. Sawney, must 'ave 'is clean pair o' pants every week,
'e must, an' a shirt an' vest, too. I tell 'im he ought to 'ave been a
millionaire."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Sawney, "I sometimes wishes my 'usband would be content
with calico linings to 'is trousers, like some folks I could name. 'E's
afraid o' them rubbin' 'im, 'e says; but then 'e always was clean in 'is
'abits."
This remark was directly levelled at Mrs. Bindle's censorship of
everything appertaining to nether-laundry.
"Well, I must say I sympathises with 'im," remarked Mrs. Grimps,
returning the hair-pin to where it belonged. "When I sees some folks'
washing, I says to myself, I says, 'Wot can they wear underneath?'"
"An' well you might, Mrs. Grimps," cried Mrs. Sawney meaningly. "P'raps
they spend the money on pink ribbons to tie up their lace curtains. It's
all very well to make a show with yer windows, but," with the air of one
who has made an important discovery, "you can't be clean unless you're
clean all over, I says."
Whilst these remarks were being bandied to and fro over her head, Mrs.
Bindle had been engaged in pegging to the clothes-line the first batch
of her week's wash. Her face was grimmer and harder than usual, and
there was in her eyes a cold, grey look, suggestive of an iron control.
"Yes," proceeded Mrs. Grimps, "I always 'ave said an' always shall, that
it's the underneaths wot count."
Mrs. Bindle stuck a peg in the corner of a tablecloth and, taking
another from her mouth, she proceeded to the other end of the tablecloth
and jabbed that, too, astride the line.
"'Always 'ave dainty linjerry, 'Arriet,' my pore mother used to say,"
continued Mrs. Sawney, "an' I always 'ave. After all, who wants three
pillow-cases a week?"
This was in the nature of a direct challenge, as Mrs. Bindle had just
stepped back from attaching to the line a third pillow-case, which
immediately proceeded to balloon itself into joyous abandon.
"If you _are_ religious, you didn't ought to be cruel to dumb animals,"
announced Mrs. Grimps, "throwin' water over the pore creatures."
"That sort never is kind to any think but theirselves," commented Mrs.
Sawney, with the air of one who is well-versed in the ways of the
devout.
Each time Mrs. Bindle emerged from her scullery that morning, her two
relentless neighbours appeared as if by magic, and oblique pleasantries
ebbed and flowed above her head.
The episode of Mrs. Bindle's lock-out was discussed in detail. The
"goody-goody" qualities affected by "some people" were commented on in
relation to the more brutal instincts they occasionally manifested.
The treatment that certain pleasant-spoken husbands, whom it was "a
pleasure to meet," received from their wives, whose faces were like
"vinegar on the point of a needle," left both Mrs. Grimps and Mrs.
Sawney incapable of expressing the indignation that was within them.
When Bindle came home to dinner, he found "Mrs. B. with a temper wot 'ad
got a nasty edge on it," as he expressed it to one of his mates on his
return to work. He was too wise, however, to venture an enquiry as to
the cause. He realised that to ask for the wind might mean reaping the
whirlwind.
Immediately after the meal, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to clear the lines to
make room for another batch. She hoped to get done whilst her neighbours
were at dinner; but she had not been in the garden half-a-minute before
her tormentors appeared.
"I been thinkin' of keepin' a few fowls," remarked Mrs. Sawney, her
mouth full of bread and cheese, "jest a 'andful of cocks an' a few
'ens," and she winked down at Mrs. Grimps, as Mrs. Bindle pegged a lace
window-curtain on the line, having first subjected it to a vigorous
rubbing with a duster.
"An' very nice too," agreed Mrs. Grimps; "I must say I likes an egg for
my tea," she added, "only them cocks do fight so."
"Well, I shouldn't get too many," continued Mrs. Sawney, "say three
cocks an' three 'ens. They ought to get on nicely together."
These remarks had reference to a one-time project of Mrs. Bindle to
supply her table with new-laid eggs, in the pursuit of which she had
purchased three pairs of birds, equally divided as to sex.
"That was the only time I ever enjoyed a bit o' cock-fightin' on my
own," Bindle was wont to remark, when telling the story of Mrs. Bindle's
application of the rule of monogamy to a fowl-run.
He had made one endeavour to enlighten Mrs. Bindle upon the fact that
the domestic cock (she insisted on the term "rooster") had neither
rounded Cape Turk, nor weathered Seraglio Point; but he was told not to
be disgusting, Mrs. Bindle's invariable rejoinder when sex matters
cropped up. He had therefore desisted, enjoying to the full Mrs.
Bindle's efforts to police her new colony.
In those days, the Bindle's back garden had been a riot of flying
feathers, belligerent cocks and squawking hens, chivvied about by Mrs.
Bindle, armed with mop or broom.
Mrs. Sawney and a Mrs. Telcher, who had preceded Mrs. Grimps in the
occupancy of No. 5, had sat at their bedroom windows, laughing until the
tears ran down their dubious cheeks and their sides ached. When their
mirth permitted, they had tendered advice; but for the most part they
were so weak from laughing that speech was denied them.
Mrs. Bindle's knowledge of the ways of fowls was limited; but it
embraced one important piece of information--that without "roosters",
hens would not lay. When Bindle had striven to set her right, he had
been silenced with the inevitable, "Don't be disgusting."
She had reasoned that if hens were stimulated to lay by the presence of
the "male bird", then a cavalier each would surely result in an
increased output.
The fowls, however, had disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and
thereafter Bindle realised that it was neither safe nor politic to refer
to the subject. It had taken a plate of rice, hurled at his head from
the other side of the kitchen, to bring him to this philosophical frame
of mind.
For weeks afterwards, the children of Fenton Street would greet Mrs.
Bindle's appearance with strange crowing noises, which pleased them and
convulsed their parents; for Mrs. Bindle's fowls had become _the_ joke
of the neighbourhood.
"I must say I likes a man wots got a pleasant word for everyone,"
remarked Mrs. Sawney, some two hours later, as Mrs. Bindle picked up the
clothes-basket containing the last of the day's wash, and made for the
scullery door, "even when 'e ain't 'appy in 'is 'ome life," she added,
as the scullery door banged-to for the day, and Mrs. Grimps concurred as
she disappeared, to catch-up with the day's work as best she could, and
prepare the children's tea.
III
That evening at supper, Bindle heard what had been withheld from Mrs.
Grimps and Mrs. Sawney--Mrs. Bindle's opinion of her neighbours. With
great dexterity, she managed to link him up with their misdeeds. He
should have got on as his brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, had got on, and
then she would not have been forced to reside in a neighbourhood so
utterly dead to all sense of refinement and proper conduct.
Bindle had come to regard Tuesdays as days of wrath, and he usually
managed to slip out after supper with as little ostentation as possible.
Reasoning that religion and cleanliness were productive of such mental
disturbances, he was frankly for what he called "a dirty 'eathen"; but
he was wise enough to keep his views to himself.
"If you were a man you'd stop it," she stormed, "allowing me to be
insulted as I've been to-day."
"But 'ow can I stop you an' them a-scrappin'?" he protested, with
corrugated forehead.
"You can go in and tell them that you won't have it."
"But then Sawney an' Grimps would start on me."
"That's what it is, you're afraid," she cried, triumphantly. "If you was
a man you'd hit back; but you're not."
"But I ain't a-goin' to start fightin' because some one says I don't
wear----"
"Stop it!"
And Bindle stopped it.
"Why don't you do something like Mr. Hearty?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, as
he pushed back his chair and rose. She was determined not to be deprived
of her scapegoat, at least not without another offensive.
He paused before replying, making sure that his line of retreat was
open. The greengrocering success of her brother-in-law was used by Mrs.
Bindle as a whip of scorpions.
"'Earty don't do things," he replied, sidling towards the door. "'E does
people," and with footwork that would have made a champion fly-weight
envious, he was out in the passage before Mrs. Bindle could retort.
Long and late that night she pondered over the indignities to which she
had been subjected during the day. There were wanton moments when she
yearned to be able to display to the neighbours the whole of her
laundry--and Bindle's. Herself a connoisseur of garments that passed
through the wash-tub, she knew that those of her house could hold their
own, as joyously white and playful in the breeze as any that her
neighbours were able to produce.
She had suffered with a still tongue; yet it had not turned aside wrath,
particularly her own wrath. Instinctively, her thoughts reverted to the
time when an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were regarded as
legal tender.
All that night and the next day she pondered. When Bindle returned on
the Wednesday evening, he found her almost light-hearted. "Gospel
Bells", Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn, was going with a rare swing, and
during the meal that followed, she was bordering on the conversational.
Several times he regarded her curiously.
"Somethink's up," he muttered; but, too wise in his experience, he made
no endeavour to probe the mystery.
For the rest of the week Mrs. Bindle spent every odd moment she could
spare from her domestic duties in collecting what she mentally described
as "rubbish". She went through each room with a toothcomb. By Saturday
night, she had accumulated in the wash-house, a pile of odds and ends
which, as Bindle said, would have been enough to start a rag-and-bone
shop.
Curiously enough, Mrs. Bindle did not resent his remark; instead she
almost smiled, so marked was her expression of grim complacency.
On Sunday at chapel, she sang with a vigour and fervency that attracted
to her the curious gaze of more than one pair of eyes.
"Mrs. B.'s got somethink in 'er stockin'," mumbled Bindle, as he rose
from the supper-table that night. "Never seen 'er so cheerio in all my
puff. I 'ope it ain't drink."
Monday morning dawned, and Mrs. Bindle was up an hour earlier than
usual, still almost blithe in her manner.
"Shouldn't be surprised if she's a-goin' to run away with ole 'Earty,"
muttered Bindle, as he took from her almost gracious hands his third
cup of tea at breakfast.
"You sings like a two-year-old, Lizzie," he ventured. "I like them
little twiddley bits wot you been puttin' into that 'ymn."
The "twiddley bits" to which Bindle referred was her rendering of
"bells," as a word of three syllables, "be-e-ells."
"You get on with your breakfast," was her retort; but there was about it
neither reproach nor rancour.
Again he looked at her curiously.
"Can't make 'er out these last few days," he muttered, as he rose and
picked up his cap. "Somethink's up!"
Mrs. Bindle proceeded to wash-up the breakfast things to the tune of
"Hold the Fort." From time to time during the morning, she would glance
out of the window to see if Mrs. Grimps, or Mrs. Sawney had yet begun to
"hang-out".
They were usually late; but this morning they were later than usual. It
was after ten before Mrs. Grimps appeared with the first basket of wet
clothes. She was followed a few minutes later by Mrs. Sawney.
The two women exchanged greetings, the day was too busy a one for
anything more.
As they pegged the various items of the week's wash to their respective
lines, Mrs. Bindle watched from the back-bedroom window, her eyes like
points of steel, her lips a grim grey line. She was experiencing the
sensations of the general who sees the enemy delivered into his hands.
As soon as Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had returned to their wash-tubs,
Mrs. Bindle descended to the scullery, where lay the heap of rubbish she
had collected during the previous week. With great deliberation she
proceeded to stuff it into a clothes-basket, by means of which she
transported the mass to the bottom of the garden, a proceeding which
required several journeys.
Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps were too busily occupied to concern
themselves with the movements of their neighbour.
Her task completed, Mrs. Bindle returned to her domestic duties, and in
due time ate a solitary dinner, Bindle being engaged too far away to
admit of his sharing it with her. She then proceeded upstairs to perform
her toilette, as on Monday afternoons she always arranged to go out
"dressed". This in itself was a direct challenge to Fenton Street, which
had to stay at home and attend to the cleansing of its linen.
Her toilette finished, Mrs. Bindle slipped into the back bedroom. Below,
her two neighbours were engaged in hanging-out the second instalment of
their wash, the first batch having been gathered-in ready for the
mangle. After that, they would eat their mid-day meal. Although no
gossip, Mrs. Bindle was not unobservant, and she knew the movements of
her neighbours as well as they knew hers.
A quarter of an hour later, the front door of No. 7 banged-to. Mrs.
Bindle, in brown alpaca, a brown bonnet with a dash of purple, and
biscuit-coloured gloves, was going to see her niece, Millie Dixon, nee
Hearty, with whom she had arranged to spend the afternoon.
IV
"Mrs. Sawney! Mrs. Sawney! Come and look at your clothes!"
Mrs. Grimps, her hands on the top of the fence, shouted her thrilling
appeal across the intervening garden.
Mrs. Sawney appeared, as if propelled from her scullery door by some
unseen force.
For a moment she stood blinking stupidly, as dense volumes of smut-laden
smoke ascended to the blueness of heaven from the garden of No. 7. It
was only the smoke, however, that ascended. One glance at the piebald
garments hanging from her linen-lines was sufficient to convince Mrs.
Sawney of that.
"It's that woman," she almost screamed, as she began to pound at the
fence dividing her garden from that of Mrs. Bindle. "I'll show 'er."
"Yes; but what about the----" Mrs. Grimps broke-off, stifled by a volume
of dense black smoke that curled across to her. "Look at them smuts."
Mrs. Bindle had taken the precaution of adding some paraffin and colza
oil to her bonfire, which was now blazing merrily, sending forth an
ever-increasing deluge of smuts, as if conscious of what was expected of
it.
Mrs. Sawney continued to bang on the fence, whilst Mrs. Grimps dashed
through her house and proceeded to pound at Mrs. Bindle's front door
with a vigour born of hate and desperation.
"She's gorn out."
The information was vouchsafed by a little boy in petticoats, who had
toddled uncertainly from the other side of the street, and now stood
clinging to the railings with grubby hands.
Mrs. Grimps scurried back again to the scene of disaster.
She was just in time to see Mrs. Sawney take what appeared to be the
tail-end of a header into Mrs. Bindle's back-garden, displaying in the
process a pair of stockings that owed little to the wash-tub, and less
to the darning-needle.
"Get some water," she gasped, as she picked herself up and once more
consigned her hosiery to the seclusion of her skirts. Mrs. Grimps dashed
into the scullery.
A minute later she re-appeared with a large pail, from which water
slopped as she walked. With much grunting and a considerable wetting of
her own clothes, she succeeded in passing it over the fence to her
neighbour.
With one hand grasping the handle and the other the rim at the base,
Mrs. Sawney staggered towards the fire and inverted the pail. Then, with
a scream, she dropped the pail, threw her apron over her head, and ran
from the cloud of steam and the deluge of blacks that her rash act had
occasioned.
"'Urt yerself?" enquired Mrs. Grimps, solicitously as she gazed
mournfully at her ruined "wash", upon which big flakes of black were
descending like locusts upon the fair lands of Pharaoh.
Mrs. Sawney removed the apron from her head, and blinked up at the sky,
as if to assure herself that the blessing of sight was still hers.
"The wicked cat!" she vociferated, when she found that no damage had
been done. "Come on, let's put it out," she exhorted as, with a swift
movement, she picked up the pail and handed it over the fence to the
waiting Mrs. Grimps.
Ten minutes later, the fire was extinguished; but the washing was
ruined.
Mrs. Sawney gazed across the fence at a dishevelled caricature of Mrs.
Grimps, with the full consciousness that she herself must look even
worse. She also realised that she had to make the return journey over
the fence, under the critical eyes of Mrs. Grimps, and that to climb a
fence without an exposure of leg was an impossibility.
Both women were wet to the skin, as neither had proved expert in the
handing of brimming pails of water over a wooden fence; both were
spotted like the pard; both were in their hearts breathing dire
vengeance upon the perpetrator of the outrage, who just at that moment
was alighting from a tram at Hammersmith.
* * * * *
Throughout that afternoon, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited;
grim-lipped and hard-eyed they waited. Fenton Street was to see
something that it had not even dreamed of. Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps
had decided unanimously to "show 'er."
Their offspring had been instructed that, at the sight of Mrs. Bindle,
they were to return hot-foot and report.
The children had told their friends, and their friends had told their
mothers, with the result that not only Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps; but
every housewife in Fenton Street was on the qui vive.
Soon after six there were cries of "Here she comes," as if Mrs. Bindle
had been the Boat Race, followed by a sudden stampede of children.
Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps rushed to action-quarters. Mrs. Sawney gave
a stir to a pail of blacklead and water behind the front door, whilst
Mrs. Grimps seized a soft broom, which she had saturated in water used
for washing-up the dinner-things.
The children clustered round the gate, and hung on to the railings.
Housewives came to their doors, or appeared at their bedroom windows.
Fenton Street loved Drama, the bigger the "D" with which it was spelled,
the more they enjoyed it.
Behind their front doors, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited and
watched. Suddenly the crowd that had attached itself to the railings
began to melt away, and the babel of clattering voices died down.
Several women were seen to leave their garden-gates and walk up the
street. Still the two grim-faced women waited behind their
"street-doors."
At length, as the last child left the railings and tore up the street,
both women decided that something must have happened.
The sight of Mrs. Sawney at her door brought Mrs. Grimps to hers, just
as Harriet, the nine years old daughter of Mrs. Sawney, rushed up
breathless.
"She's comin'," gasped the child, whereat both women disappeared, Mrs.
Sawney to grasp the handle of her pail, and Mrs. Grimps to seize her
broom.
When Mrs. Bindle appeared, the centre of an eddying mass of children,
with a few women on the outer fringe, she was carrying in her arms a
child of about five, who was whimpering pitifully. Her bonnet had
slipped back, her right hand, from which the biscuit-coloured glove had
been removed, was stained with blood, whilst her umbrella was being
carried, as if it were a sacred relic, by a curly-headed little lad who
was living his hour.
At the sight of the procession, Mrs. Sawney let the handle of her pail
fall with a clang, whilst Mrs. Grimps dropped her broom.
"It's my 'Ector," she screamed, as she bolted down the garden path. "Oh,
my God! 'e's dead."
"Get some hot water," ordered Mrs. Bindle, as she pushed the mother
aside and entered the gate. "He's cut his leg."
Followed by Mrs. Bindle, Mrs. Grimps bolted into the house. There was
something in Mrs. Bindle's tone that brooked of no delay.
Watched by Mrs. Grimps, Mrs. Sawney, and several of their friends, Mrs.
Bindle washed the wound and bound it up with clean white rag, in place
of her own blood-soaked handkerchief, and she did her work with the
thoroughness with which she did everything.
When she had finished, she took the child in her arms, and for an hour
soothed it with the assurance that it was "the bravest little precious
in all the world." When she made to transfer her burden to its mother's
arms, the uproar that ensued decided Mrs. Bindle to continue her
ministrations.
It was ten o'clock before she finally left Mrs. Grimps's house, and she
did so without a word.
"Who'd 'ave thought it!" remarked Mrs. Sawney, as Mrs. Bindle closed the
gate.
"She's got a way with kids," admitted Mrs. Grimps. "I will say that for
'er," and in turning back along the dark hall, she fell over the broom
with which she had intended to greet her neighbour.
Mrs. Sawney returned to her own house and hurled a saucepan at Sandy, a
circumstance which kept him from home for two days and three nights--he
was not a cat to take undue risks.