man, and Bindle, nodding in agreement, buried his face in his pewter.[Pg 37]

[Pg 37]

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hopton was explaining to a few personal friends how it all had happened.

"She done good work in startin' of us orf," was her tribute to Mrs. Bindle; "but I can't say I takes to her as a friend."[Pg 38]

[Pg 38]

CHAPTER II

MRS. BINDLE'S WASHING-DAY

I

Shoooooooossssh!

Like a silver flash, the contents of a water-jug descended upon the back of the moth-eaten sandy cat, engaged in excavating Mrs. Bindle's geranium-bed.

A curve of yellow, and Mrs. Sawney's "Sandy" had taken the dividing wall between No. 7 and No. 9 in one movement—and the drama was over.

Mrs. Bindle closed her parlour-window. She refilled the jug, placing it ready for the next delinquent and then returned to her domestic duties.

On the other side of a thin partitioning wall, Mrs. Sawney left the window from which she had viewed her cat's attack upon Mrs. Bindle's geranium-bed, and Mrs. Bindle's counter-attack upon Sandy's person. Passing into the small passage she opened the front door, her lips set in a determined line.

"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," she called, in accents that caused Sandy, now three gardens away, to pause in the act of shaking his various members[Pg 39] one by one, in an endeavour to disembarrass himself of the contents of Mrs. Bindle's water-jug.

[Pg 39]

"Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy," cooed Mrs. Sawney. "Poor pussy."

The tone of his mistress' voice rendered Sandy suspicious as to her intentions. He was a cat who had fought his way from kittenhood to a three-year-old, and that with the loss of nothing more conspicuous than the tip of his left ear. 

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