"Do you wish to charge her?" asked the policeman in an official voice.
"'Charge me!'" broke in Mrs. Bindle. "'Charge me!' I should like to see 'im do it. See what 'e's done to my geraniums, bringing his filthy sticks into my front garden. 'Charge me!'" she repeated. "Just let him try it!" and she brought the mop to a position from which it could be launched at the big man's head.
Instinctively he sank down again on to the path, and the policeman interposed his body between the weapon and the vanquished.
"There's plenty of witnesses here to prove what he done," cried Mrs. Bindle shrilly.
Once more the big man raised himself to a sitting posture; but Mrs. Bindle had no intention of allowing him to control the situation. To her a policeman meant justice, and to this self-possessed lad in the uniform of unlimited authority she opened her heart and, at the same time, the vials of her wrath.
"'Ere was I ironin' in my kitchen when this rabble," she indicated the crowd with the handle of the mop, "descended upon me like the plague of locusts." To Mrs. Bindle, scriptural allusion was a necessity.
"They said they wanted to take my 'ouse. Said I'd told them it was to let, the perjured scum of Judas. Then he came along"—she pointed to her victim who was gingerly feeling the bump that Mrs. Bindle's mop had raised—"and threw all that dirty lumber into my garden, and—and——" Here her voice broke, for to Mrs. Bindle those geranium slips were very dear.
"You'd better get up."
At the policeman's words the big man rose heavily to his feet. For a moment he stood still, as if to make quite sure that no bones were broken. Then his hand went to his neck-cloth and he produced a piece of hearthstone which had, apparently, become detached from the parent slab.
"Threw bricks at me," he complained, holding out the piece of hearthstone to the policeman.