"It's little enough pleasure I get," she would cry, in moments of passionate protest.
To this, Bindle would sometimes reply that "it's wantin' a thing wot makes you get it." Sometimes he would go on to elaborate the theory into the impossibility of "'avin' a thing for supper an' savin' it for breakfast."
By this, he meant to convey to Mrs. Bindle that she was too set on post-mortem joys to get the full flavour of those of this world.
Mrs. Bindle possessed the soul of a potential martyr. If she found she were enjoying herself, she would become convinced that, somewhere associated with it, must be Sin with a capital "S", unless of course the enjoyment were directly connected with the chapel.
She was fully convinced that it was wrong to be happy. Laughter inspired her with distrust, as laughter rose from carnal thoughts carnally expressed. She fought with a relentless courage the old Adam within herself, inspired always by the thought that her reward would come in another and a better world.
Her theology was that you must give up in this world all that your "carnal nature" cries out for, and your reward in the next world will be a sort of perpetual jamboree, where you will see the damned being boiled in oil, or nipped with red-hot pincers by little devils with curly tails. In this she had little to learn either from a Dante, or the Spanish Inquisition.
The Biblical descriptions of heaven she accepted in all their literalness. She expected golden streets and jewelled gates, wings of ineffable whiteness and harps of an inspired sweetness, the whole composed by an orchestra capable of playing without break or interval.
She insisted that the world was wicked, just as she insisted that it was miserable. She struggled hard to bring the light of salvation to Bindle, and she groaned in spirit at his obvious happiness, knowing that to be happy was to be damned.
To her, a soul was what a scalp is to the American Indian. She strove to collect them, knowing that the believer who went to salvation with the greatest number of saved souls dangling at her girdle, would be thrice welcome, and thrice blessed.
In Bindle's case, however, she had to fall back upon the wheat that fell upon stony ground. With a cheerfulness that he made no effort to disguise, Bindle declined to be saved.