The bright, sunny morning had ended in a dreary, overcast evening, with hints of snow in the air. The warm, spacious kitchen was very comfortable, but it was intensely quiet and still, even to dreariness. The audible ticking of the clock, and the soft purr of the little gray kitten at Mrs. Griffin’s feet, seemed to make the stillness and quiet even more marked and oppressive to her peculiar mood. “It’s a lonesome life,” she repeated. “It is hard even for me, and I do not see how Mr. Delaney bears it at all, used as he has been to society and amusement. Sometimes I fairly long for the sight of a friendly face and the sound of a kind voice besides my master’s. I never felt the dreariness of my life as much as I have done since Miss Rodney came and went away. Spoiled child as she was, she brought a bit of life into the house!” She sighed and mechanically lifted the lid of the stew-pan and stirred the savory broth with a long-handled spoon. “Tap! Tap! Tap!” That ghostly sound broke so suddenly upon the silence of the room, that Mrs. Griffin gave a violent start and dropped her long spoon upon the floor with a hideous clatter, disturbing kitty’s peaceful slumbers by a thump upon her little pink nose, accompanied by a few drops of hot broth that sent her pattering into the corner with a spiteful meow. The good woman mechanically reached for the spoon and looked toward the door. “Tap! Tap!” came the low knocking again, with as ghostly a sound as ever Poe’s fabled raven produced. Mrs. Griffin stared at the closed door with an air of stupid amazement, and made no move to open it. “Whoever can it be?” she asked aloud, and a squeaky, peculiar voice from outside, answered immediately: “Open the door, my good woman, and see!” “What impudence! There, then, I won’t do it!” replied Mrs. Griffin, who, although dying of curiosity to see her visitor, knew better than to admit any one within the walls of Delaney House. “You’re the first woman, then, that I ever knew to turn a poor peddler from the door, and it’ll be to your sorrow as you did so,” replied a bantering voice outside. “I have a basketful of notions, and I’m just from New York with the biggest bargains of the season. Come, don’t be churlish, mistress. Open the door, and let me come in and warm my frozen fingers, even if you won’t buy one of my nice lace collars.” Mrs. Griffin’s eyes had brightened at the mention of the peddler. The majority of women have an unexplainable propensity for buying from peddlers, and Mrs. Griffin was no exception to the rule. Besides, she was dying of loneliness and _ennui_. She intensely desired to speak to some one, and to have better companionship, if only for an hour, than the purring gray kitten.