"I believe you are right," was Malcolm's answer. "Take care of that last step, child, it is quite worn away." And then, as they stood side by side in the dismal little area, he looked vainly for a bell. Finally, he rapped so smartly at the door with Anna's sunshade that they distinctly heard an irate voice say, "Drat their imperence," and a tall, bony-looking woman, in a flowered gingham dress and a very red face, bounced out on them. She was so tall and so excessively bony, and so altogether aggressive-looking, that Anna felt inclined to hide herself behind Malcolm. Indeed, he remarked afterwards himself, that he had never seen a finer specimen of a muscular Christian, barring the Christianity, in his life. "What's your pleasure?" observed the Amazon, folding her arms in a defiant manner, while through the open door they could now hear distinctly the cobbler's subdued and singularly toneless voice meandering on--"O'er earth's green fields, and ocean's wave-beat shore." "Deuce take the man!" continued the woman wrathfully. "Will you hold your old doddering tongue, Caleb, and let the gentlefolk speak!" But there was no cessation of the dreary, dirge-like sounds. They found out afterwards that Caleb always worked with cotton-wool in his ears, so his wife's remonstrance failed to reach him. "You see, it is like this, sir," he observed to Malcolm afterwards, when they became better acquainted with each other: "Ma'am's tongue is like a leaking water-butt. It is bound to drip, drip from week's end to week's end, and there's no stopping it. It is a way she has, and Kit and me are bound to put up with it. She means no harm, doesn't Kezia; she is a hard-working crittur, and does her duty, though she is a bit noisy over it; she is good to us both in her way, and I am not quarrelsome by nature, so, as I like to work in peace, I just stop my ears and hum to myself, and if she scolds I mind it no more than I do the buzzing of the blue-bottles on the glass." "But the child Kit?" questioned Malcolm a little anxiously. Then a queer little twisted smile came to Caleb's face. "She is used to it, is Kit, and she don't take it to heart much. I have heard her cheek Ma'am sometimes. Ma'am wouldn't hurt a hair of her head, for all her bouncings and flinging of pots and kettles when she is in a temper. It is the basement tries her, poor soul. She says she has never been used to it. Her first husband was in the tin trade, and they had a tidy little shop in the Borough." "Oh, Mrs. Martin has been married before," observed Malcolm. He was rather surprised at this piece of intelligence. "Lord love you, yes, sir; and when she became Josh Leggett's widow she just took up with me because she said she felt lonesome. She did it with her eyes open as I often tell her, but she has never got over the basement. It does not agree with her constitution, and it never will." "I suppose Kit is Mrs. Martin's child?" asked Malcolm, as he digested this information.