"That's right, go on!" stormed Mrs. Bindle. "A lot of sympathy I get from you, a lot you care about me walking myself off my feet, so long as your stomach's full."
Bindle scratched his head in perplexity, but forbore to retort; instead he hummed Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn "Gospel Bells."
"Look what you done to Mr. Hearty, that Saturday," cried Mrs. Bindle.
"Me!" said Bindle, cursing himself for reminding her by humming the hymn.
"Yes, you!" was the reply. "He had to go to the police-court."
"Well, it's made 'is fortune, an' 'e got orf," replied Bindle.
"Yes, but it might have ruined him. You wouldn't have cared, and in war-time too," Mrs. Bindle added.
"Well, well! the war'll be over some day," said Bindle cheerfully.
"That's what you always say. Why don't they make peace?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, as if Bindle himself were the sole obstacle to the tranquillisation of the world. Mrs. Bindle sat down with a decisiveness that characterised all her movements.
"Sometimes I wish I was dead," she remarked. "There's nothin' but inching and pinching and slaving my fingers to the bone trying to make a shilling go further than it will, and yet they won't make peace."