"He came to enquire why Millie was so often absent from chapel. I shall have to speak to Mr. Hearty," said Mrs. Bindle.
Bindle's reply was a prolonged whistle. "'E's after Millikins, is 'e?" he muttered.
That is how both Bindle and Mrs. Bindle first learned that the Rev. Andrew MacFie was interested in their pretty niece, Millie Hearty.
Mrs. Bindle mentioned the fact of Mr. MacFie's call to Mr. Hearty, and from that moment he had seen in the minister a potential son-in-law.
The angular piety of Mr. MacFie rendered him an awkward, not to say a clumsy, lover.
"I likes to see ole Mac a-'angin' round Millikins," remarked Bindle to Mrs. Bindle one evening over supper. "It's like an 'ippopotamus a-givin' the glad-eye to a canary."
"Heathen!" was Mrs. Bindle's sole comment.
Millie Hearty herself had been much troubled by Mr. MacFie's ponderous attentions. At first she had regarded them merely as the friendly interest of a pastor in a member of his flock; but soon they became too obvious for misinterpretation.
"Millikins!" said Bindle one evening, as he and Millie were walking home from the pictures, "you ain't a-goin' to forget Charlie, are you?"
"Uncle Joe!" There was reproach in Millie's voice as she withdrew her arm from Bindle's.