"She's afraid o' dying, Joe," wheezed Mrs. Hearty "Alf was just the same when 'e 'ad the flu."
Bindle spent money with the recklessness of a desperate man. He bought strange and inappropriate foods in the hope that they would tempt Mrs. Bindle's appetite. No matter where his work led him, he was always on the look out for some dainty, which he would purchase and carry home in triumph to Mrs. Hearty.
"You ain't 'alf a joke, Joe," she wheezed one evening, sinking down upon a chair and proceeding to heave and billow with suppressed laughter.
Bindle looked lugubriously at the yellow pie-dish into which he had just emptied about a quart of whelks, purchased in the Mile End Road.
"Ain't they good for bronchitis?" he enquired with a crestfallen look.
"Last night it was pig's feet," gasped Mrs. Hearty, "and the night before saveloys," and she proceeded to beat her chest with a grubby fist.
After that, Bindle had fallen back upon less debatable things. He had purchased illustrated papers, flowers, a quarter of a pound of chocolate creams, which had become a little wilted, owing to the crowded state of the tramcar in which he had returned home that night.
During those anxious days, he collected a strange assortment of articles, perishable and otherwise. The thing he could not do was to go home without some token of his solicitude.
One evening he acquired a vividly coloured oleograph in a gilt frame, which depicted a yawning grave, whilst in the distance an angel was to be seen carrying a very material-looking spirit to heaven.
Mrs. Bindle's reception of the gift was a wild look of terror, followed by a fit of coughing that frightened Bindle almost as much as it did her.