The man shook his head lugubriously.
"What about a pub?"
"Mile away," gloomed the man.
"Gawd Almighty!" Bindle's exclamation was not concerned with the man's remark, but with something he extracted from the bath. "Well, I'm blowed," he muttered.
"'Ere, Lizzie," he called out.
Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent. Bindle held up an elastic-sided boot from which marmalade fell solemnly and reluctantly.
Then the flood-gates of Mrs. Bindle's wrath burst apart, and she poured down upon Bindle's head a deluge of reproach. He and he alone was responsible for all the disasters that had befallen them. He had done it on purpose because she wanted a holiday. He wasn't a husband, he was a blasphemer, an atheist, a cumberer of the earth, and all that was evil.
She was interrupted in her tirade by the approach of a little man with a round, bald, shiny head and a worried expression of countenance.
"D'yer know 'ow to milk a cow, mate?" he enquired of Bindle, apparently quite unconscious that he had precipitated himself into the midst of a domestic scene.
"Do I know 'ow to wot?" demanded Bindle, eyeing the man as if he had asked a most unusual question.