Mrs. Oleander pointed to two long ropes strung at the lower end of the back yard, and Susan Sharpe, hoisting the basket, set off at once to hang them to dry.
The two old women watched her from the window with admiring eyes.
"She's a noble worker!" at last said old Sally. "She 'minds me of the time when I was a young girl myself. Dearie me! It went to my heart to see her rubbing them sheets and things as if they were nothing."
"And I think she's to be trusted, too," said Mrs. Oleander. "She talks as sharp to that girl as you or I, Sally. I shouldn't mind if we had her here for good."
Meantime, the object of all this commendation had marched across the yard, and proceeded scientifically to hang the garments on the line. But all the while the keen eyes inside the green spectacles went roving about, and alighted presently on something that rewarded her for her hard day's work.
It was a man emerging from the pine woods, and crossing the waste strip of marshland that extended to the farm.
A high board fence separated the back yard from this waste land, and but few ever came that way.
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: