In his astonishment, Bindle dropped the flap, and the picture was blotted out.
"Come an' 'ave a look at Daisy," he heard the man with the stubbly chin say. It was obviously his conception of terminating an awkward interview.
"Good day," he heard a voice mumble, to which Mrs. Bindle replied with almost cordiality.
Bindle scrambled back to his mattress, just as Mrs. Bindle pulled aside the flap of the tent and entered, a bottle still in either hand. At the sight, Bindle became aware of a thirst which until then had slumbered.
"I can do with a drop o' Guinness," he cried cheerily, his eyes upon the bottles. "Nice o' them coves to think of us."
"It was me, not you," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder, as she stepped across to her mattress.
"But you don't drink beer, Lizzie," he protested. "You're temperance. I'll drink 'em for you."
"If you do, I'll kill you, Bindle." And the intensity with which she uttered the threat decided him that it would be better to leave the brace of Guinness severely alone; but he was sorely puzzled.
II
That evening, in the sanded tap-room of The Trowel and Turtle, the male summer-campers expressed themselves for the twentieth time uncompromisingly upon the subject of bishops and summer-camps. They were "fed up to the ruddy neck," and would give not a little to be back in London, where it was possible to find a pub "without gettin' a blinkin' blister on your stutterin' 'eel."