"I thought that if perhaps—I mean," hesitated Millie, "that if you both tried very hard to—to, not to hurt each other——" again she stopped.
"I'm sure I've never said anything to him that all the world might not hear," retorted Mrs. Bindle, with the unction of the righteous, "although he's always saying things to me that make me hot with shame, married woman though I am."
"But, Aunt Lizzie," persisted Millie, clasping Mrs. Bindle's arm with both hands, and looking appealingly up into her face, "won't you try, just for my sake, pleeeeeease," she coaxed.
"I've tried until I'm tired of trying," was the ungracious retort. "I moil and toil, inch and pinch, work day and night to mend his clothes and get his food ready, and this is what I get for it. He makes me a laughing-stock, talks about me behind my back. Oh, I know!" she added hastily, as Millie made a sign of dissent. "He can't deceive me. He wants to bring me down to his own level of wickedness, then he'll be happy; but he shan't," she cried, the Daughter of the Lord manifesting herself. "I'll kill myself first. He shall never have that pleasure, no one shall ever be able to say that I let him drag me down.
"I've always done my duty by him," she continued, returning to the threadbare phrase that was ever present in her mind. "I've worked morning, noon and night to try and keep him respectable, and see how he treats me. I'm worse off than a servant, I tell him so and what does he do?" she demanded. "Laughs at me," she cried shrilly, answering her own question, "and humiliates me before the neighbours. Gets the children to call after me, makes——"
"Oh, Aunt Lizzie! You mustn't say that," cried Millie in distress. "I'm sure Uncle Joe would never do such a thing. He couldn't," she added with conviction.
"Well, they do it," retorted Mrs. Bindle, conscious of a feeling that possibly she had gone too far; "only yesterday they did it."
"What did they say?" enquired Millie curiously.
"They said," she paused as if hesitating to repeat what the youth of Fenton Street had called after her. Then, as if determined to convict Bindle of all the sins possible, she continued, "They called after me all the way up Fenton Street——" again she paused.
"Yes, Aunt Lizzie."