Ten minutes later, the fire was extinguished; but the washing was ruined.
Mrs. Sawney gazed across the fence at a dishevelled caricature of Mrs. Grimps, with the full consciousness that she herself must look even worse. She also realised that she had to make the return journey over the fence, under the critical eyes of Mrs. Grimps, and that to climb a fence without an exposure of leg was an impossibility.
Both women were wet to the skin, as neither had proved expert in the handing of brimming pails of water over a wooden fence; both were spotted like the pard; both were in their hearts breathing dire vengeance upon the perpetrator of the outrage, who just at that moment was alighting from a tram at Hammersmith.
Throughout that afternoon, Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps waited; grim-lipped and hard-eyed they waited. Fenton Street was to see something that it had not even dreamed of. Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps had decided unanimously to "show 'er."
Their offspring had been instructed that, at the sight of Mrs. Bindle, they were to return hot-foot and report.
The children had told their friends, and their friends had told their mothers, with the result that not only Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps; but every housewife in Fenton Street was on the qui vive.
Soon after six there were cries of "Here she comes," as if Mrs. Bindle had been the Boat Race, followed by a sudden stampede of children.
Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps rushed to action-quarters. Mrs. Sawney gave a stir to a pail of blacklead and water behind the front door, whilst Mrs. Grimps seized a soft broom, which she had saturated in water used for washing-up the dinner-things.
The children clustered round the gate, and hung on to the railings. Housewives came to their doors, or appeared at their bedroom windows. Fenton Street loved Drama, the bigger the "D" with which it was spelled, the more they enjoyed it.