She sniffed angrily and threw the poker into the ash-pan.
"I wasn't readin' about racin'," he continued pacifically. "I was jest readin' about a cove wot went orf with another cove's missis, 'is best overcoat and two chickens."
"Stop it!" She stood over him, her lips compressed, her eyes hard and steely, as if meditating violence, then, turning suddenly, she walked swiftly across to the dresser and pulled out the left-hand drawer. Taking from it her bonnet, she put it on her head and proceeded to tie the strings beneath her chin.
From behind the kitchen door she unhooked a brown mackintosh, into which she struggled.
"Goin' out?" he enquired.
"Yes," she replied, as she tore open the door, "and perhaps I'll never come back again," and with a bang that shook the house she was gone.
She took a tram to Hammersmith on her way to see her niece, Millie Dixon. She was angry; the day had been one of continual annoyances and vexations. Entering the car she buried her elbows deep into the redundant figure of a woman who was also endeavouring to enter.
Once inside, the woman began to inform the car what she thought of "scraggy 'Uns with faces like a drop of vinegar on the edge of a knife."
"That's the way you gets cancer," she continued, as she stroked the left side of her ample bust. "People with elbows like that should 'ave 'em padded," and Mrs. Bindle was conscious that the car was with her antagonist.
Mrs. Bindle next proceeded to quarrel with the conductor about the fare, which had gone up a halfpenny, and she ended by threatening to report him for not setting her down between the scheduled stopping-places.