"That's all you care about, your stomach," she cried, her voice rising hysterically. "So long as you've got plenty to eat, nothing else matters. I wonder I stand it. I—I——"
Bindle's eyes were still fixed anxiously upon the frying-pan, which, in her excitement, Mrs. Bindle was moving from side to side of the fire.
"Look out!" he cried, "you'll upset it, an' I'm as 'ungry as an 'awk."
Suddenly the light of madness sprang into her eyes.
"Oh! you are, are you? Well, get somebody else to cook your meals," and with that she inverted the frying-pan, tipping the contents into the fire. As Bindle sprang up from the box on which he had been sitting, she rubbed the frying-pan into the ashes, making a hideous mess of the burning-wood, eggs and bacon.
With a scream that was half a sob, she fled to the shelter of the tent, leaving Bindle to gaze down upon the wreck of what had been intended for his breakfast.
Picking up a stick, charred at one end, he began to rake among the embers in the vague hope of being able to disinter from the wreck something that was eatable; but Mrs. Bindle's action in rubbing the frying-pan into the ashes had removed from the contents all semblance of food. With a sigh he rose to his feet to find the bishop gazing down at him.
"Had a mishap?" he asked pleasantly.
"You've 'it it, sir," grinned Bindle. "Twenty years ago," he added in a whisper.
"Twenty years ago!" murmured the bishop, a puzzled expression on his face. "What was twenty years ago?"