Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles, Jenkins [popular romance novels TXT] 📗

"It's very kind of you, sir. I'm sorry Bindle let you help with the cooking."

"But I'm going to help with the eating," cried the bishop gaily.

"But it's not fit work for a——"

"I know what you're going to say," said the bishop, "and I don't want you to say it. Here we are all friends, helping one another, and giving a meal when the hungry appears. For this morning I'm going to fill the r�le of the hungry. I wonder if you'll make the tea, Mrs. Bindle, Mr. Bindle tells me your tea is wonderful."

"Oh, my Gawd!" murmured Bindle, casting up his eyes.

With what was almost a smile, Mrs. Bindle proceeded to do the bishop's bidding.

During the meal Bindle was silent, leaving the conversation to Mrs. Bindle and the bishop. By the time he had finished his third cup of tea, Mrs. Bindle was almost gay.

The bishop talked household-management, touched on religion and Christian charity, slid off again to summer-camps, thence on to marriage, babies and the hundred and one other things dear to a woman's heart.

When he finally rose to go, Bindle saw in Mrs. Bindle's eyes a smile that almost reached her lips.

"I hope that if ever you honour us again, sir, you will let me know——"

"No, Mrs. Bindle, it's the unexpected that delights me, and I'm going to be selfish. Thank you for your[Pg 217] hospitality and our pleasant chat," and with that he was gone.

"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle as he gazed after the figure of the retreating bishop, "an' me always thinkin' that you 'ad to 'ave an 'ymn an' a tin o' salmon to make love to Mrs. B."

"And now, I suppose, you'll go off and leave me to do all the washing-up. Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth when the bishop was here. You couldn't say a word before him," she snapped, and she proceeded to gather together the dishes.

"No," muttered Bindle as he fetched some sticks for the fire. "'E can talk tack all right; but when you wants it to last, it's better to 'ave a tin o' salmon to fall back on."

That morning Daisy had a serious rival in the field-kitchen, which like her was an unknown quantity, capable alike of ministering to the happiness of all, or of withholding that which was expected of it.

It was soon obvious to the bishop that the field-kitchen was going to prove as great a source of anxiety as Daisy. No one manifested any marked inclination to act as stoker. Apart from this, the bishop had entirely forgotten the important item of fuel, having omitted to order either coal or coke. In addition there was a marked suspicion, on the part of the wives, of what they regarded as a new-fangled way of cooking a meal. Many of them had already heard of army field-kitchens from their husbands, and were filled with foreboding.[Pg 218]

It took all the bishop's tact and enthusiasm to modify their obvious antagonism.

"I ain't a-goin' to trust anythink o' mine in a rusty old thing like that," said a fat woman with a grimy skin and scanty hair.

"Same 'ere, they didn't ought to 'ave let us come down without making proper pervision," complained a second, seizing an opportunity when the bishop's head was in the stoke-hole to utter the heresy.

"Bless me!" he said, withdrawing his head, unconscious that there was a black smudge on the right episcopal cheek. "It will take a dreadful lot of fuel. Now, who will volunteer to stoke?" turning his most persuasive smile upon the group of men, who had been keenly interested in his examination of the contrivance.

The men shuffled their feet, looked at one another, as if each expected to find in another the spirit of sacrifice lacking in himself.

Their disinclination was so marked that the bishop's face fell, until he suddenly caught sight of Bindle approaching.

"Ah!" he cried. "Here's the man I want. Now, Bindle," he called out, "you saved us from the bull, how would you like to become stoker?"

"Surely I ain't as bad as all that, sir," grinned Bindle.

"I'm not speaking professionally," laughed the bishop, who had already ingratiated himself with the men because he did not "talk like a ruddy parson." "I want somebody to take charge of this field-kitchen," he continued. "I'd do it myself, only I've got such[Pg 219] a lot of other things to see to. I'll borrow some coal from Mr. Timkins."

Bindle gazed dubiously at the unattractive mass of iron, dabbed with the weather-worn greens and browns of camouflage and war.

"It's quite simple," said the bishop. "You light the fire here, that's the oven, and you boil things here, and—we shall soon get it going."

"I don't mind stokin', sir," said Bindle at length; "but I ain't a-goin' to take charge of 'oo's dinner's wot. If there's goin' to be any scrappin' with the ladies, well, I ain't in it."

Finally it was arranged that Bindle should start the fire and get the field-kitchen into working order, and that the putting-in the oven and taking-out again of the various dishes should be left to the discretion of the campers themselves, who were to be responsible for the length of time required to cook their own particular meals.

With astonishing energy, the bishop set the children to collect wood, and soon Bindle, throwing himself into the work with enthusiasm, had the fire well alight. There had arrived from the farm a good supply of coal and coke.

"You ain't 'alf 'it it unlucky, mate," said the man with the bristly chin. "'E ought to 'ave 'ired a cook," he added. "We come 'ere to enjoy ourselves, not to be blinkin' stokers. That's like them ruddy parsons," he added, "always wantin' somethin' for nuffin."

"'Ere, come along, cheerful," cried Bindle, "give me a 'and with this coke," and, a minute later, the[Pg 220] lugubrious Barnes found himself sweating like a horse, and shovelling fuel into the kitchen's voracious maw.

"That's not the way!"

The man straightened his back and, with one hand on the spade, gazed at Mrs. Bindle, who had approached unobserved. With the grubby thumb of his other hand he rubbed his chin, giving to his unprepossessing features a lopsided appearance.

"Wot ain't the way, missis?" he asked with the air of one quite prepared to listen to reason.

"The coke should be damped," was the response, "and you're putting in too much."

"But we want it to burn up," he protested.

Mrs. Bindle ostentatiously turned upon him a narrow back.

"You ought to know better, at least, Bindle," she snapped, and proceeded to give him instruction in the art of encouraging a fire.

"You'd better take some out," she said.

"'Ere ole sport," cried Bindle, "give us——" he stopped suddenly. His assistant had disappeared.

"You mustn't let anyone put anything in until the oven's hot," continued Mrs. Bindle, "and you mustn't open the door too often. You'd better fix a time when they can bring the food, say eleven o'clock."

"Early doors threepence extra?" queried Bindle.

"We're going to have sausage-toad-in-the-hole, and mind you don't burn it."

"I'll watch it as if it was my own cheeild," vowed Bindle.

"If the bishop knew you as I know you, he wouldn't[Pg 221] have trusted you with this," said Mrs. Bindle, as she walked away with indrawn lips and head in the air, stepping with the self-consciousness of a bantam that feels its spurs.

"Blowed if she don't think I volunteered for the bloomin' job," he muttered, as he ceased extracting pieces of coke from the furnace. "Well, if their dinner ain't done it's their fault, an' if it's overdone it ain't mine," and with that he drew his pipe from his pocket and filled it.

"No luck," he cried, as a grey-haired old woman with the dirt of other years on her face hobbled up with a pie-dish. "Doors ain't open yet."

"But it's an onion pie," grumbled the old dame, "and onions takes a lot o' cookin'."

"Can't 'elp it," grinned Bindle. "Doors ain't open till eleven."

"But——" began the woman.

"Nothin', doin' mother," said the obstinate Bindle. "You see this 'ere is a religious kitchen. It's a different sort from an ordinary blasphemious kitchen."

On the stroke of eleven Mrs. Bindle appeared with a large brown pie-dish, the sight of which made Bindle's mouth water.

"Now then," he cried, "line up for the bakin'-queue. Shillin' a 'ead an' all bad nuts changed. Oh! no, you don't," he cried, as one woman proffered a basin. "I'm stoker, not cook. You shoves 'em in yourself, an' you fetches 'em when you wants 'em. If there's any scrappin' to be done, I'll be umpire."[Pg 222]

One by one the dishes were inserted in the oven, and one by one their owners retired, a feeling of greater confidence in their hearts now that they could prepare a proper dinner. The men went off to get a drink, and soon Bindle was alone.

During the first half-hour Mrs. Bindle paid three separate visits to the field-kitchen. To her it was a new and puzzling contrivance, and she had no means of gauging the heat of the oven. She regarded it distrustfully and, on the occasion of the second visit, gave a special word of warning to Bindle.

At 11.40 Barnes returned with a large black bottle, which he held out to Bindle with an invitation to "'ave a drink."

Bindle removed the cork and put the bottle to his lips, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down joyously.

"Ah!" he cried, as he at length lowered the bottle and his head at the same time. "That's the stuff to give 'em," and reluctantly he handed back the bottle to its owner, who hastily withdrew at the sight of Mrs. Bindle approaching.

When she had taken her departure, Bindle began to feel drowsy. The sun was hot, the air was still, and the world was very good to live in. Still, there was the field-kitchen to be looked after.

For some time he struggled against the call of sleep; but do what he would, his head continued to nod, and his eyelids seemed weighted with lead.

Suddenly he had an inspiration. If he stoked-up the field-kitchen, it would look after itself, and he[Pg 223] could have just the "forty winks" his nature craved.

With feverish energy he set to work with the shovel, treating the two stacks of coal and coke with entire impartiality. Then, when he had filled the furnace, he closed the door with the air of the Roman sentry relieving himself of responsibility by setting a burglar-alarm. Getting well out of the radius of the heat caused by the furnace, he composed himself to slumber behind the heap of coke.

Suddenly he was aroused from a dream in which he stood on the deck of a wrecked steamer, surrounded by steam which was escaping with vicious hisses from the damaged boilers.

He sat up and looked about him. The air seemed white with vapour, in and out of which two figures could be seen moving. He struggled to his feet and looked about him.

A few yards away he saw Mrs. Bindle engaged in throwing water at the field-kitchen, and then dashing back quickly to escape the smother of steam that resulted. The bishop, with a bucket and a pink-and-blue jug, was dashing water on to the monster's back.

Bindle gazed at the scene in astonishment, then, making a detour, he approached from the opposite side, to see what it was that had produced the crisis. Just at that moment, the bishop decided that the pail had been sufficiently lightened by the use of the pink-and-blue jug to enable him to lift it.

A moment later Bindle was the centre of a cascade of water and a mantle of spray.[Pg 224]

"'Ere! wot the 'ell?" he bawled.

The bishop dodged round to the other side and apologised profusely, explaining how Mrs. Bindle had discovered that the field-kitchen had become overheated and that between them they were trying to lower its temperature.

"Yes; but I ain't over'eated," protested Bindle.

"You put too much coal in, Bindle; the place would have been red-hot in half an hour."

"Well; but look at all them dinners that——"

"Don't talk to him, my lord," said Mrs. Bindle, who from a fellow-camper had learned how a bishop should be addressed. "He's done it on purpose."

"No, no, Mrs. Bindle," said the bishop genially. "I'm sure he didn't mean to do it. It's really my fault."

And Mrs. Bindle left it at that.

From that point, however, she took charge of the operations, the bishop and Bindle working under her direction. The news that the field-kitchen was on fire, conveyed to their parents by the children, had brought up the campers in full-force and at the double.

There had been a rush for the oven; but Mrs. Bindle soon showed that she had the situation well in hand, and the sight of the bishop doing her bidding had a reassuring effect.

Under her supervision, each dish and basin was withdrawn, and first aid administered to such as required it. Those that were burnt, were tended with a skill and expedition that commanded the admiration of every housewife present. They were content to leave[Pg 225] matters