The next Sunday night Bindle heard the whole story. Dick Little was desperately in love with Ethel Knob-Kerrick, the daughter of Lady Knob-Kerrick, whose discomfiture at the Barton Bridge Temperance Fête had been due to his tampering with the lemonade. Lady Knob-Kerrick had come to know of clandestine meetings, and henceforth her daughter had been practically a prisoner, never being allowed out of her mother's sight or that of Miss Strint, who, although in sympathy with the lovers, was too much afraid of Lady Knob-Kerrick to render them any assistance.
"So I'm going to bolt with her," said Dick Little.
"And very nice too," remarked Bindle, as he gazed admiringly at the photograph of an extremely pretty brunette with expressive eyes and a tilted chin.
"Funny things, women," continued Bindle. "Yer think yer've got a bloomin' peach, when squash! and there is only the stone and a little juice left in yer 'and. Funny things, women! She'll probably nag yer into an asylum or the Blue Boar or——"
"Shut up, Bindle!" There was a hard note in Dick Little's voice.
"All right, sir, all right," said Bindle patiently. "I'd 'ave said the same meself when I was a-courtin' me little red-'eaded blossom. Funny things, women!
"If it ain't rude, sir," Bindle continued after a pause, "'ave yer got an 'ome ready? 'Cos when yer get a bird yer sort o' got to get a cage, an' if that cage ain't gold, wi' bits o' gold sort o' lyin' about, well, there'll be some feathers flyin', an' they won't be 'ers. A woman wot ain't got money makes a man moult pretty quick. Yer'll excuse me, sir, but I'm an old warrior at this 'ere game."
"I've bought a practice in Chelsea, and besides I've got between three and four hundred a year," replied Little.
"H'm," said Bindle, "may keep 'er in scent an' shoe-strings. I suppose you're set on doin' it?"
"Absolutely."