it would mean that scores of dissenters would have a thirsty afternoon.
The problem had been solved by Lady Knob-Kerrick, who insisted that the order should be placed with a London firm of caterers, which, as a limited company, could not be expected to have religious convictions. Thus it was that the order went to Harridge's Stores.
II
By eight o'clock on the morning of the Fête a pantechnicon was lumbering its ungainly way along the Portsmouth Road. Bindle sat meditatively on the tail-board, smoking and obviously bored.
With the wholesome contempt of an incorrigible cockney he contemplated the landscape.
"'Edges, trees, an' fields, an' a mile to walk for a drink. Not me," he muttered, relighting his pipe with solemn gravity.
As the pantechnicon rumbled its ponderous way through hamlet and village, Bindle lightly tossed a few pleasantries to the rustics who stood aside to gaze at what, to them, constituted an incident in the day's monotony of motor-cars and dust.
The morning advanced, and Bindle grew more direct in his criticisms on, and contempt for, the
