“What! What!” cried the young officer, lifting his eyebrows and laughing. Susan set her teeth and clicked her needles hard. “We hear there’s a pretty niece of yours, who’s not so hard on the young man,” he went on; “and since you’re so frankly a rebel yourself, Mrs. Tongs, you’ll admit it’s not a bad guess that she may have coaxed you into protecting even a lover you don’t like, when he’s doing spy’s work for your admired General Washington. I shall certainly search the house.” “My name is Mrs. Thurrell, young man; it’s only old friends and neighbors who may call me ‘Susan Tongs,’” answered Susan dryly. “And no coaxing of my silly niece, Tamsey--not if she coaxed from now till judgment--should drive me to harboring any lad against my will. I do as I please in my own house. But she’s a soft thing, and young, and it’s possible she might have slyed him in by the back way, if he’s really in town and hiding; you see I sit here all day, and could little tell what went on in the rest of the house. “The notion of Othniel Purdie stowed away in secret in cupboard or closet of mine pleases me no more than it does you,” she scolded on; “so on second thoughts you may search and welcome, provided only you look well after your men and see there’s no mauling of my quilts and calicoes--manners, sir, manners! Would you shove by a woman, hat cocked, on her own threshold, when she has bidden you to come in? Keep back, or come properly!” for the young lieutenant, impatient of further talk, had started to push past Susan, whose great chair and person almost blocked the way, and had made a sign to a soldier as if commanding him to assist in removing the obstacle. But before the soldier could mount the steps, and quick as the officer’s hand touched her chair, Susan had snatched up her lazy-tongs--there was a snap, a glint of shining dark metal, and the nippers clicked together within an inch of his ear. He uttered a dismayed oath and leaped backward down the low steps, where he would have fallen had not the grinning soldier caught him in his arms. Recovering himself, he cried, furiously, “Put down that pistol!” Susan smiled a grandmotherly smile and gently shook her head. The soldier’s grin broadened. “’Twa’n’t a pistol, sir,” he explained respectfully. “I don’t know what it was; but ’twa’n’t a pistol.” “Let me pass!” said the officer, reassured but mortified, and springing again up the steps. “Move aside and let me pass, woman!” “Woman, and an old woman,” answered Susan serenely, “and surely you may pass, for I told you so. But a woman of my weight moves slowly, and it behooves a young gentleman to show patience. I will be treated civilly under my own roof; and I won’t budge an inch for a swaggering boy with his hat on--there!” she continued, as he thrust roughly by, squeezed nearly flat between the armchair and the door-jamb, “there’s for your impudence!”