Page:Herbert Jenkins - Bindle.djvu/143

 with her betokened an item of great interest and importance:

"Mr. Hearty prayed for you to-night, Bindle."

Bindle sat up in his chair as if he had been shot.

"'Earty wot?" he interrogated, with unaccustomed anger in his voice, and an unwonted flash in his eye. "'Earty wot?"

"He prayed for you," replied Mrs. Bindle in what was for her a hushed voice; "a beautiful prayer about a brother who had fallen by the wayside, a wheat-ear among thorns."

"'E prayed for me—'im?"

Bindle removed his pipe from his mouth, and gripping the bowl between thumb and finger, pointed what remained of the stem at Mrs. Bindle, as she stuck a hat-pin through her bonnet and placed it on the dresser.

"'E prayed for me?" The words came with such deliberation and intensity that Mrs. Bindle glanced round sharply.

"Yes!" she snapped, "an' you want it. You're nothin' but an 'eathen." Mrs. Bindle was forgetting her careful articulation.

"A brother fallen by the roadside"

"Wayside," corrected Mrs. Bindle, as she banged a loaf on the table.

"A brother 'oo 'as fallen by the wayside, a wheat-ear among thorns," murmured Bindle as if to himself. Suddenly he grinned; the humour of the thing seemed to strike him.

"Prayed for in church—leastwise chapel—jest