"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.
"This red-and-black silk handkerchief, ma'am," the peddler was crying, holding up a gay square of silk tartan, "is one fifty, and dirt cheap at that. Seein' it's you, ma'am, however, I'll take a dollar for it. Wuth two—it is, by ginger! Sold three dozens on 'em down the village, and got two dollars apiece for 'em, every one."