"Help! Yes, it'll help you to find out how hungry you can get," she retorted grimly. "I'd like to have that man Smillie here, I'd give him a bit of my mind."

"But 'e ain't done it," protested Bindle, a sense of fair play prompting him to defend the absent leader. "'E's a miner. We don't belong to 'is Union."

"They're all tarred with the same brush," cried[Pg 12] Mrs. Bindle, "a good-for-nothing, lazy lot. They turn you round their little fingers, and then laugh at you up their sleeves. I know them," she added darkly.

[Pg 12]

Bindle edged towards the door. He had not been in favour of the strike; now it was even less popular with him.

"I suppose you're going round to your low public-house, to drink and smoke and tell each other how clever you've been," she continued. "Then you'll come back expecting to find your dinner ready to put in your mouth."

Mrs. Bindle's words were prophetic. Bindle was going round to The Yellow Ostrich to meet his mates, and discuss the latest strike-news.

"You wouldn't 'ave me a blackleg, Lizzie, would you?" he asked.

"Don't talk to me about such things," she retorted. "I'm a hardworking woman, I am, inchin' and pinchin' to keep the home respectable, while you and your low companions refuse to work. I wish I had them all here, I'd give them strikes." Her voice shook with suppressed passion.

Realising that the fates were against him, Bindle beat a gloomy retreat, and turned his steps in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich.

At one o'clock he returned to Fenton Street, a little doubtful; but very hungry.

He closed the gate quietly, Mrs. Bindle hated the banging of gates. Suddenly he caught sight of a piece of white paper pinned to the front door. A moment[Pg 13] later he was reading the dumbfounding announcement:

[Pg 13]

CONTENTS

"I have struck too.

 "E. Bindle." 

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