"Won't you tell me what you were going to?" said Mrs. Bindle. She knew of old how rambling were Mrs. Stitchley's methods of narration.
"To be sure, to be sure," and she nodded until the jet ornament in her black bonnet seemed to have become palsied. "Well, my dear, it's like this. As I was sayin' to Stitchley this mornin', 'I can't see poor Mrs. Bindle deceived by that monster.' I see through 'im that evenin', a-turnin' your 'appy party into——" she paused for a simile—"into wot 'e turned it into," she added with inspiration.
"Oh! the wickedness of this world, Mrs. Bindle. Oh! the sin and error." She cast up her bleary, watery blue eyes, and gazed at the yellow paper flycatcher, and once more the jet ornament began to shiver.
"Please tell me what it is, Mrs. Stitchley," said Mrs. Bindle, conscious of a sense of impending disaster.
"The wicked man, the cruel, heartless creature; but they're all the same, as I tell Stitchley, and him with a wife like you, Mrs. Bindle, to carry on with a young Jezebel like that, to——"
"Carry on with a young Jezebel!"
Mrs. Bindle's whole manner had changed. Her uprightness seemed to have become emphasised, and the grim look about her mouth had hardened into one of menace. Her eyes, hard as two pieces of steel, seemed to pierce through her visitor's brain. "What do you mean?" she demanded.
Instinctively Mrs. Stitchley recoiled.
"As I says to Stitchley——" she began, when Mrs. Bindle broke in.
"Never mind Mr. Stitchley," she snapped. "Tell me what you mean."