Page:Herbert Jenkins - Bindle.djvu/20

 day's work, save under very exceptional circumstances. No one had ever seen him drunk. He had once explained to a mate who urged upon him an extra glass, "I don't put more on me back than I can carry an' I do ditto wi' me stomach."

Bindle was a journeyman furniture-remover by profession, and the life of a journeyman furniture-remover is fraught with many vicissitudes and hardships. As one of the profession once phrased it to Bindle, "If it wasn't for them bespattered quarter-days, there might be a livin' in it."

People, however, move at set periods, or, as Bindle put it, they "seems to take root as if they was bloomin' vegetables." The set periods are practically reduced to three, for few care to face the inconvenience of a Christmas move.

Once upon a time family removals were leisurely affairs, which the contractors took care to spread over many days; now, however, moving is a matter of contract, or, as Bindle himself expressed it, "Yer 'as to carry a book-case under one arm, a spring-mattress under the other, a planner on yer back, and then they wonders why yer ain't doin' somethink wi' yer teeth."

All these things conspired to make Bindle's living a precarious one. He was not lazy, and sought work assiduously. In his time he had undertaken many strange jobs, his intelligence