So Mrs. Susan Sharpe rubbed, and wrung, and soaped, and pounded, and boiled, and blued for three mortal hours, and then there was a huge basket of clothes all ready to go on the line.

“Now, ma’am,” said this priceless treasure, “if you’ll just show me the clothes-line, I’ll hang these here out.”

Mrs. Oleander pointed to two long ropes strung at the lower end of the back yard, and Susan Sharpe, hoisting the basket, set off at once to hang them to dry.

The two old women watched her from the window with admiring eyes.

“She’s a noble worker!” at last said old Sally.  “She ’minds me of the time when I was a young girl myself.  Dearie me!  It went to my heart to see her rubbing them sheets and things as if they were nothing.”

“And I think she’s to be trusted, too,” said Mrs. Oleander.  “She talks as sharp to that girl as you or I, Sally.  I shouldn’t mind if we had her here for good.”

Meantime, the object of all this commendation had marched across the yard, and proceeded scientifically to hang the garments on the line.  But all the while the keen eyes inside the green spectacles went roving about, and alighted presently on something that rewarded her for her hard day’s work.

It was a man emerging from the pine woods, and crossing the waste strip of marshland that extended to the farm.

A high board fence separated the back yard from this waste land, and but few ever came that way.

The man wore the dress and had the pack of a peddler, and a quantity of tow hair escaped from under a broad-brimmed hat.  The brown face was half hidden in an enormous growth of light whiskers.

“Can it be?” thought Susan, with a throbbing heart.  “I darsn’t speak, for them two old witches are watching from the window.”

Here the peddler espied her, and trolled out, in a rich, manly voice: 

“My father he has locked the door,
  My mother keeps the key: 
But neither bolts nor bars shall part
  My own true love and me.”

“It is him!” gasped Mrs. Susan Sharpe.  “Oh, good gracious!”

“Good-day to you, my strapping, lass.  How do you find yourself this blessed morning?”

Susan Sharpe knew there were listening ears and looking eyes in the kitchen, and for their benefit she retorted: 

“It’s no business of yours how I am!  Be off with you!  We don’t allow no vagrants here!”

“But I ain’t a vagrant, my duck o’ diamonds.  I’m a respectable Yankee peddler, trying to turn an honest penny by selling knickknacks to the fair sect.  Do let me in, there’s a pretty dear!  You hain’t no idee of the lovely things I’ve got in my pack—­all dirt cheap, too!”

“I don’t want nothing,” said Mrs. Susan Sharpe.

“But your ma does, my love, or your elder sister, which I see ’em at the winder this minute.  Now do go, there’s a lamb, and ask your ma if I mayn’t come in.”