"Different from 'Earty's Sunday nights," muttered Bindle, as he walked away. "I wonder which makes the best men. It's a good job I ain't got anythink to do with 'eaven, or them wheat-ears might sort o' get mixed wi' the thorns."
CHAPTER XI
MR. HEARTY BECOMES EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR
"'Earty may be all 'ymns an' whiskers," Bindle had said, "an' I 'ate 'is 'oly look an' oily ways; but 'e sticks to his job an' works like a blackleg. It don't seem to give 'im no pleasure though. 'E don't often smile, an' when 'e does it's as if 'e thought Gawd was a-goin' to charge it up against 'im."
Mr. Hearty was an excellent tradesman; he sold nothing that he had not bought himself, and Covent Garden knew no shrewder judge of what to buy and what not to buy, or, as Bindle phrased it:
"'E's so used to lookin' for sin in the soul that 'e can see a rotten apple in the middle of a barrel without knockin' the top off. Yes, I'll give 'Earty 'is due. There ain't many as can knock spots off 'im as a greengrocer, though as far as bein' a man, I seen better things than 'im come out o' cheese."
On the Saturday morning after Bindle's visit to Dick Little, Mr. Hearty was busily engaged in superintending the arrangement of his Fulham High Street shop, giving an order here and a touch there, always with excellent results.
According to his wont he had returned from market before eight o'clock, breakfasted, hurried round to his other shop in the Wandsworth Bridge Road, and before ten was back again at Fulham.
He was occupied in putting the finishing touches to a honey-coloured pyramid of apples, each in its nest of pink paper like a setting hen, when an ill-favoured man entered leading an enormous dog, in which the salient points of the mastiff, bull-terrier, and French poodle struggled for expression. The man looked at a dirty piece of paper he held in his hand.