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." Mrs. Sharpe dropped her basket in a pet and stalked back to the house. "It's a peddler-man," she said, crossly, "a-wanting to come in. I told him he couldn't, and it's of no use; and the best thing you can do is to set the dogs on him." "No, no!" cried Mrs. Oleander, shrilly. "Let him come in. I like peddlers. Go with her, Sally, and tell the man to come round to the garden gate." "I'll tell him," said Susan Sharpe, stalking out again. "Let Sally go and open the gate." She marched across the yard and addressed the "perambulating merchant." "You're to go round to the front gate. This way. I've a note for you in my thimble. I'll drop the thimble in your box." The first half of Mrs. Sharpe's speech was given for the benefit of Mrs. Oleander's greedy ears--the latter half, hurriedly and in a low voice, for his own. The sagacious peddler nodded, struck up a second stave of his ditty, and trudged round to the front gate. Mrs. Sharpe finished hanging out the clothes before she re-entered the kitchen. When she did, there sat the peddler displaying his wares, and expatiating volubly on their transcendent merits. And there stood Sally and Mrs. Oleander, devouring the contents of the box with greedy eyes. It is not in the heart of women--country women, particularly--to resist the fascinations of the peddler's pack. Mrs. Oleander and her old servant were rather of the strong-minded order; but their eyes glistened avariciously, for all that, at the display of combs, and brushes, and handkerchiefs, and ribbons, and gaudy prints, and stockings, and cotton cloth, and all the innumerables that peddlers do delight in.