Inspired by this advice, the big woman reached forward to seize the knocker. At that moment the door was wrenched open, and Mrs. Bindle appeared. She had removed her apron and brushed her thin, sandy hair, which was drawn back from her sharp, hatchet-like face so that not a hair wantoned from the restraining influence of the knot behind.
Grim, with indrawn lips and the light of battle in her eyes she glared, first at the little man with whom she had already held parley, then at the woman in the foulard blouse.
At chapel, there was no more meek and docile "Daughter of the Lord" than Mrs. Bindle. To her, religion was an ever-ready help and sustenance; but there was something in her life that bulked even larger than her Faith, although she would have been the first to deny it. That thing was her Home.
In keeping the domestic temple of her hearth as she conceived it should be kept, Mrs. Bindle toiled ceaselessly. It was her fetish. She worshipped at chapel as a stepping-stone to post-mortem glory; but her home was the real altar at which she sacrificed.
As she gazed at the "rabble," as she mentally characterised it, littering the tiled-path of the front garden, which only that morning she had cleaned, the rage of David entered her heart; but she was a God-fearing woman who disliked violence—until it was absolutely necessary.
"Was it you knocking?" she demanded of the big woman in the foulard blouse. Her voice was sharp as the edge of a razor; but restrained.
"That's right, my dear," replied the woman comfortably, "I come about the 'ouse."
"Oh! you have, have you?" cried Mrs. Bindle. "And are these your friends?" Her eyes for a moment left those of her antagonist and took in the queue which, by now, overflowed the path into the roadway.
"Look 'ere, I'll give you sixteen bob a week," broke in the woman with the tweed cap and the hat-pin, instantly rendering herself an Ishmael.
"'Ere, none o' that!" cried an angry female voice. "Fair do's."