The Unseen Bridgegroom, May Agnes Fleming [ebook reader for surface pro .TXT] 📗

Old Sally, in a state threatening spontaneous combustion, bent over the fire, and Mrs. Oleander, in her rocking-chair, superintended.

"Are you only getting up now?" asked the doctor's mother, suspiciously.

"Been up these two hours, ma'am," responded Mrs. Sharpe. "I tidied up myself and my room, and then tidied up Miss Dane and her'n. I came down to fetch up her breakfast."

"It's all ready," said Sally. "Fetch along your tray."

So Susan Sharpe fetched along her tray, and received a bountiful supply of coffee and toast, and steak and muffins.

"There's nothing like plenty of good victuals for curing the vapors," observed Sally, sagely. "You make the young woman eat this, Mrs. Sharpe, and she'll feel better, you'll see."

Mrs. Sharpe smiled, as she bore off her burden, at the idea Sally must have of one little girl's appetite.

She found Mollie sitting at the window gazing at the sea, sparkling as if sown with stars, in the morning sunshine.

"Is it not beautiful?" she said, turning to the nurse. "Oh, if I were only free once more--free to have a plunge in that snow-white surf--free to have a breezy run along that delightful beach this magnificent morning?"

Mrs. Sharpe set down her tray, looked cautiously around her, lowered her voice, fixed her green-spectacled eyes meaningly on Mollie's face, and uttered these remarkable words:

"Wait! You may be free before long!"

"What do you mean?" cried Mollie, starting violently.

"Hush! 'Sh! 'sh!" laying her hand over the girl's mouth. "Not a word. Walls have ears, in prisons. Take your breakfast, miss," raising her voice. "It will do you no good, acting ugly and not eating."

For the stairs had creaked under a cautious, ascending footstep, and Mrs. Sharpe had heard that creak.

So, too, had Mollie this time; and she turned her shining eyes in eloquent silence to Mrs. Sharpe, and Mrs. Sharpe had nodded, and smiled, and grimaced toward the door in a way that spoke volumes.

"I'm going down to get my breakfast, now," she said, authoritatively. "Let me see what you'll have done by the time I get back."

The stairs were creaking again. Mrs. Sharpe did not hurry too much, and Mrs. Oleander, all panting, was back in her rocker when she re-entered the kitchen, trying very hard to look as though she had never left it.

"And how's your patient to-day, Mrs. Sharpe?" she asked, as soon as she could properly get her wind.

"Much the same," said Mrs. Sharpe, with brevity; "wants to starve herself to death, crying in spells, and making a time. Let me help you."

This to Sally, who was scrambling to get half a dozen things at once on the table. Mrs. Sharpe came to the rescue with a practiced hand, and upon the entrance of old Peter, who had been out chaining up the dogs, the quartet immediately sat down to breakfast.

After breakfast, the new nurse again made herself generally useful in the kitchen, helped Sally, who was inclined to give out at the knees, to "red up," washed dishes and swept the floor with a brisk celerity worthy of all praise.

And then, it being wash-day, she whipped up her sleeves, displaying two lusty, round arms, and fell to with a will among the soiled linens and steaming soap-suds.

"I may as well do something," she said, brusquely, in answer to Mrs. Oleander's very faint objections; "there's nothing to do upstairs, and she doesn't want me. She only calls me names."

So Mrs. Susan Sharpe rubbed, and wrung, and soaped, and pounded, and boiled, and blued for three mortal hours, and then there was a huge basket of clothes all ready to go on the line.

"Now, ma'am," said this priceless treasure, "if you'll just show me the clothes-line, I'll hang these here out."

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:

"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.

"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."

"I'll take it at a dollar," said Mrs. Oleander. "Sally, that piece of brown merino would just suit you."

"Makes up lovely, ma'am," said the peddler, turning to Sally; "only four dollars for the hull piece. Jest feel of it--soft as a baby's skin. Halloo! miss, what can I do for you?"

This last to Susan Sharpe, who had set down her basket, and was looking on.

"Nothing," replied Susan, with asperity.

"Oh, now, don't you say that!" exclaimed this persuasive man; "you do want suthin'--lots o' things--I kin see it in them air sparklin' eyes o' your'n. What makes you wear green glasses. See here, I've blue, and white, and fancy colors, with silver straddles for the nose. Do look at 'em--there's a love!"

Mrs. Oleander laughed, and Mrs. Sharpe so far unbent her austerity as to kneel down and begin rummaging the miscellaneous articles.

The peddler's quick eye never left her hands; and when he heard the tiny click of something falling, an intelligent flash shot from him to the obnoxious green glasses.

"I want a thimble," said Mrs. Sharpe, with phlegm. "I've lost mine. How much do you ask for these here, mister?"

"Three cents apiece."

Susan paid down the three cents, pocketed the brass thimble, and slowly rose.

"No more to sell to-day," said the peddler, bundling up with celerity. "So you won't take the brown, ma'am? Sorry we can't make a trade; but I'll run up again to-morrow with a new lot, and I've no doubt we can strike a bargain. Good-morning, ladies."

With which Mr. Peddler shouldered his pack and trudged away, singing. Old Peter let him out, and locked the gate after, and watched him out of sight. The peddler ceased his song the moment he was out of hearing, struck into the woods the instant he was out of sight, and flinging his pack on the grass, tore it open.

He had not long to search--Mrs. Sharpe's tarnished old thimble was conspicuous enough among his glistening new ones. He fished it up, poked out the crumpled bit of paper, and slowly read it through. When read, he tore it into fifty morsels, and scattered them in a white shower all about. Then, with knitted brows and compressed lips, he sat and thought and thought for a full hour.

Meanwhile, matters went on smoothly behind him. Mrs. Sharpe, having finished the washing, and quite won the hearts of the two old women by her workmanlike manner, prepared her patient's dinner, and brought it up.

On this occasion Mrs. Oleander undertook to accompany her. They found that refractory patient at her usual post--the window--gazing with dreamy, empty eyes over the ceaseless sea.

Susan Sharpe was strictly on her guard; her austere face never unbent, and Mollie took her cue once more.

"Here's your dinner miss," she said, briefly; "is there anything I can do for you?"

"Nothing," replied Mollie, sullenly.