The twain set forth together, while the lonely woman sought her couch and thought mournfully of long-past days and years.
CHAPTER XLVI.
"She is a bustling, stalwart dame, and one
That well might fright a timid, modest man.
Look how she swings her arms, and treads the floor
With direful strides!"
It was a bright, sunny spring morning, and Wimbledon was beautiful in budding foliage, singing blue-birds and placid little river, with the sunbeams silvering its ripply surface.
The windows of Mr. Pimble's kitchen were raised and therein Peggy Nonce moved vigorously to and fro, with rolled-up sleeves and glowing face, stirring a great fire which roared and crackled in the jaws of a huge oven, and then back to the pantry, where she wielded the sceptre of an immense rolling-pin triumphantly over whole trays of revolting pie-crust, marched forth long files of submissive pies, and lodged them in the red-hot prison.
While the stalwart house-keeper was thus occupied, Mr. Pimble, with a yellow silk handkerchief tied over his straggling locks, and his pale, palm-figured wrapper drawn closely around him, scraped the stubbed claw of a worn-out corn broom over the kitchen floor, clapping his heelless slippers after him as he moved slowly along. Peggy never heeded him at all, but rushed to and fro, as if there had been no presence in the kitchen save her own, often dragging the dirt away, on her trailing skirts, just as the indefatigable sweeper had collected it in a pile.
All at once, pert little Susey Pimble opened the parlor door and swinging herself outward, said, "I want the dining-room castors and tea-cups, and mamma says I am to have them and you are to come and give them to me."