"Anything about the summer-camps?" she would ask, interrupting Bindle in his study of the cricket and racing news, until at last he came to hate the very name of summer-camps and all they implied.
"That's the worst o' religion," he grumbled one night at The Yellow Ostrich; "it comes a-buttin' into your 'ome life, an' then there ain't no peace."
"I don't 'old wiv religion," growled Ginger.
"I ain't got nothink to say against religion as religion," Bindle had remarked; "but I bars summer-camps."
Mrs. Bindle, however, was packing. With all the care of a practised housewife, she first devoted herself to the necessary cooking-utensils. She packed and unpacked half-a-dozen times a day, always stowing away some article that, a few minutes later, she found she required.
Her conversation at meal-times was devoted exclusively to what they should take with them. She asked innumerable questions, none of which Bindle was able satisfactorily to answer. To him the bucolic life was a closed book; but he soon realised that a holiday at the Surrey Summer-Camp was inevitable.
"Wot am I to do in a summer-camp?" he mumbled, one evening after supper. "I can drive an 'orse, if some one's leadin' it, an' I knows it's an 'en wot lays the eggs an' the cock wot makes an 'ell of a row in the mornin', same as them ole 'orrors we used to 'ave; but barrin' that, I'm done."
"That's right," broke in Mrs. Bindle, "try and spoil my pleasure, it's little enough I get."
"But wot are we goin' to do in the country?" persisted Bindle with wrinkled forehead. "I don't like gardenin', an'——"
"Pity you don't," she snapped.