"She's lost a Bradbury and found the water-rate," remarked the conductor, as he turned once more to the occupants of the car after watching Mrs. Bindle alight.
The fat woman responded to the pleasantry by expressing her views on "them wot don't know 'ow to be'ave theirselves like ladies."
With Mrs. Bindle, the lure of Joseph the Second was strong within her. When her loneliness became too great for endurance, or the domestic atmosphere manifested signs of a greater voltage than the normal, her thoughts instinctively flew to the blue-eyed nephew, who slobbered and cooed at her and raised his chubby fists in meaningless gestures. Then the hunger within her would be appeased, until some chance mention of Bindle's name would awaken her self-pity.
She found Millie alone with Joseph the Second asleep in his cot beside her. As she feasted her gaze upon the eye-shut babe, Mrs. Bindle was conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She wanted to babble baby-talk, and gaze into those filmy blue eyes.
In spite of her aunt's protests, Millie made a cup of tea, explaining as she did so that Charley was staying late at the office.
"It's a good cake, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle a few minutes later, as she delicately cut another small square from the slice of home-made cake upon the plate before her. In her eyes there was a look which was a tribute from one good cook to another. "Who gave you the recipe?"
"It was all through Uncle Joe," said Millie. "He was always saying what a wonderful cook you are, Aunt Lizzie, and that if you didn't feed pussy he wouldn't purr," she laughed. "You know what funny things he says," she added parenthetically—"so I took lessons. You see," she added quaintly, "I wanted Charley to be very happy."
"Pretty lot of purring there is in our house," was Mrs. Bindle's grim comment, as she raised her cup-and-saucer from the table upon the finger-tips of her left hand and, with little finger awkwardly crooked, lifted the cup with her disengaged hand and proceeded to sip the tea with Victorian refinement.
"How is Uncle Joe?" asked Millie. "I wish he had come."
"Oh! don't talk to me about your uncle," cried Mrs. Bindle peevishly. "He's sitting at home smoking a filthy pipe and reading the horse-racing news. I might be dirt under his feet for all the notice he takes of me."