chapel-goer, temperance, quiet, musical, fond of 'ome-comforts, good cookin'; an' don't want to pay much; regular blood I should call 'im."

"He's coming to-night to see the place," Mrs. Bindle announced, "and don't you go and make me feel ashamed. You'd better keep out of the room."

"'Ow could you!" cried Bindle reproachfully, as he proceeded to light his pipe. "Me——"

"Don't do that!" snapped Mrs. Bindle.

Bindle regarded her over the flaming match with eyebrows raised interrogatingly.

"Perhaps he doesn't smoke," she explained.

"But I ain't goin' to give up tobacco," said Bindle with decision. "'Oly Angels! me with a wife an a lodger an' no pipe!"[Pg 13]

[Pg 13]

He looked about him as if in search of sympathy. Then turning to Mrs. Bindle, he demanded:

"You mean to say I got to give up smokin' for a lodger!" Indignation had smoothed out the wrinkles round his eyes and stilled the twitchings at the corners of his mouth.

"It doesn't matter after he's here," Mrs. Bindle responded sagely.

Slowly the set-expression vanished from Bindle's face; the wrinkles and twitches returned, and he breathed a sigh of elaborate relief.

"Mrs. B.," he said admiringly, "you 'aven't lived for nineteen years with your awful wedded 'usband, lovin', 'onourin' an' obeyin' 'im—I don't think—without learnin' a thing or two." He winked knowingly.

"Yes," he continued, apparently addressing a fly upon the ceiling, "we'll catch our lodger first an' smoke 'im afterwards, all of which is good business. Funny 'ow religion never seems to make you too simple to——"

Bindle was interrupted by a knocking at the outer-door. Mrs. Bindle performed a series of movements with amazing celerity. She removed and folded her kitchen-apron, placing it swiftly in the dresser-drawer, gave a hasty glance in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece to assure herself that all was well with her personal appearance and, finally, slipped into the parlour to light the gas. She was out again in a second and, as she passed into the passage leading to the outer-door, she threw back at Bindle the one word "Remember," pregnant with as much meaning as that uttered two 

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