"Uncle Joe!" exclaimed Bindle in surprise, "Uncle Joe!"
"I told him to, Uncle Joe," explained Millie. "You see," she added with a wise air of possession, "you belong to us both now."
"Wot-o!" remarked Bindle. "Goin'-goin' gone, an' cheap at 'alf the price. 'Ere, no you don't!" By a dexterous dive he anticipated Charlie Dixon's move towards the ticket-window. A moment later he returned with three white tickets.
"Oh, Uncle Joe!" cried Millie in awe, "you've booked first-class."
"We're a first-class party to-night, ain't we, Charlie?" was Bindle's only comment.
As the two lovers walked up the stairs leading to the up-platform, Bindle found it difficult to recognise in Sergeant Charles Dixon the youth Millie had introduced to him two years previously at the cinema.
"Wonder wot 'Earty thinks of 'im now?" muttered Bindle. "Filled out, 'e 'as. Wonderful wot the army can do for a feller," he continued, regretfully thinking of the "various veins" that had debarred him from the life of a soldier.
"Well, Millikins!" he cried, as they stood waiting for the train, "an' wot d'you think of 'is Nibs?"
"I think he's lovely, Uncle Joe!" said Millie, blushing and nestling closer to her lover.
"Not much chance for your ole uncle now, eh?" There was a note of simulated regret in Bindle's voice.