"Please don't do that, mum; think o' me 'ungry wives an' child."
There was no further endeavour to enquire into the destination of Mrs. Rogers's possessions.
By four o'clock the last load had left—a miscellaneous mass of oddments that puzzled Bindle how he was ever going to sort them out.
It was past seven before Bindle and his men had finished their work. The miscellaneous things, obviously the accumulation of many years, had presented problems; but Bindle had overcome them by putting in the coal-cellar everything that he could not crowd in a lumber room at the top of the house, or distribute through the rest of the rooms.
"Seemed to have moved in an 'urry," coughed Wilkes; "I never see sich a lot of truck in all me life."
"P'r'aps they owed the rent," suggested Huggles.
"'Uggles, 'Uggles," remonstrated Bindle with a grin, "I'm surprised at you. 'Cos your family 'as shot the moon for years—'Uggles, I'm pained."
Bindle duly returned the key to the police-station, put up the vans, and himself saw that the horses were made comfortable for the night. Whenever in charge of a job he always made this his own particular duty.
II
At six o'clock on the following afternoon a railway omnibus drew up at the West Kensington police-station. In it were Mr. and Mrs. Railton-Rogers, seven little Rogerses, a nursemaid, and what is known in suburbia as a cook-general.