Ninth printing, completing 104,643 copies

 MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY PURNELL AND SONS, PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON 

 TO ARTHUR COMPTON RICKETT M.A., LL.D. 

 CONTENTS 

CONTENTS

[Pg 9]

[Pg 9]

MRS BINDLE

RS

CHAPTER I

MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT

I

"Well! What's the matter now? Lorst your job?"

With one hand resting upon the edge of the pail beside which she was kneeling, Mrs. Bindle looked up, challenge in her eyes. Bindle's unexpected appearance while she was washing the kitchen oilcloth filled her with foreboding.

"There's a strike on at the yard," he replied in a tone which, in spite of his endeavour to render it casual, sounded like a confession of guilt. He knew Mrs. Bindle; he knew also her views on strikes.

"A what?" she cried, rising to her feet and wiping her hands upon the coarse canvas apron that covered the skirt carefully festooned about her hips. "A what?"

"A strike," repeated Bindle. "They give Walter 'Odson the sack, so we all come out."[Pg 10]

[Pg 10]

"Oh! you have, have you?" she cried, her thin lips disappearing ominously. "And when are you going back, I'd like to know?" She regarded him with an eye that he knew meant war.

"Can't say," he replied, as he proceeded to fill his pipe from a tin 

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