"Look how he goes on about the chapel," continued Mrs. Bindle, fearful lest her niece's sympathy should be snatched from her. "I wonder God doesn't strike him dead. I'm sure I——"
"Strike him dead!" cried Millie in horror. "Oh, Aunt Lizzie! you don't mean that, you couldn't." She paused, seeming to bring the whole twelve months of her matronhood to the examination of the problem. "I know he's very naughty sometimes," she added sagely, "but he loves you, Aunt Lizzie. He thinks that——"
"Love!" cried Mrs. Bindle with all the scorn of a woman who has no intention of being comforted. "He loves nothing but his food and his low companions. He shames me before the neighbours, talking that familiar with common men. When I'm out with him he shouts out to bus-conductors, or whistles at policemen, or winks at—at hussies in the street." She paused in the catalogue of Bindle's crimes, whilst Millie turned her head to hide the smile she could not quite repress.
She herself had been with Bindle when he had called out to his bus-conductor friends, and whistled under his breath when passing a policeman, "If You Want to Know the Time Ask a Policeman"; but he had never winked at girls when he had been with her; of that she was sure.
"You see, Aunt Lizzie, he knows so many people, and they all like him and——"
"Only common people, like chauffeurs and workmen," was the retort. "When I'm out with him I sometimes want to sink through the ground with shame. He lets them call him 'Joe,' and of course they don't respect me." Again she sniffed ominously.
"I'll speak to him," said Millie with a wise little air that she had assumed since her marriage.
"Speak to him!" cried Mrs. Bindle scornfully. "Might as well speak to a brick wall. I've spoken to him until I'm tired, and what does he do? Laughs at me and says I'm as——" she paused, as if finding difficulty in bringing herself to give Bindle's actual expression—"says I'm as holy as ointment, if you know what that means."
"But he doesn't mean to be unkind, Aunt Lizzie, I'm sure he doesn't," protested Millie loyally. "He calls Boy—I mean Charley," she corrected herself with a little blush, "all sorts of names," and she laughed at some recollection of her own. "Don't you think, Aunt Lizzie——" she paused, conscious that she was approaching delicate ground. "Don't you think that if you and Uncle Joe were both to try and—and——" she stopped, looking across at her aunt anxiously, her lower lip indrawn and her eyes gravely wide.
"Try and what?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, a hardness creeping into her voice at the thought that anyone could see any mitigating circumstance in Bindle's treatment of her.