"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, née 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.