"Naughty!" cried Bindle, wagging an admonitory finger at her. "If I——"
"Stop it!" she cried, jumping up, and making a dash for the fire, which she proceeded to poke into extinction.
Meanwhile, Bindle had stopped it, seizing the opportunity whilst Mrs. Bindle was engaged with the fire, to slip out to The Yellow Ostrich.
II
"Looks a bit lonely, don't it?" Bindle gazed about him doubtfully.
"What did you expect in the country?" snapped Mrs. Bindle.
"Well, a tram or a bus would make it look more 'ome-like."
The Bindles were standing on the down platform of Boxton Station surrounded by their luggage. There was a Japanese basket bursting to reveal its contents, a large cardboard hat-box, a small leather bag without a handle and tied round the middle with string to reinforce a dubious fastening. There was a string-bag blatantly confessing to its heterogeneous contents, and a roll of blankets, through the centre of which poked Mrs. Bindle's second-best umbrella, with a travesty of a parrot's head for a handle.
There was a small deal box without a lid and marked "Tate's Sugar," and a frying-pan done up in newspaper, but still obviously a frying-pan. Finally there was a small tin-bath, full to overflowing, and covered by a faded maroon-coloured table-cover that had seen better days.
Bindle looked down ruefully at the litter of possessions that formed an oasis on a desert of platform.