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."

The father rested his arms on the broom handle, and turning his face toward his hopeful daughter, who was a "scion of the old stock," said, "I will come soon as I have swept the floor."

"I cannot wait," returned Susey, sharply, "I must have them this moment."

The father laid down his broom passively, and saying, "What an impatient little miss you are!" clappered off to the dining-room, and brought forth the desired articles on a waiter.

Miss Susey, all atilt with delight, danced forward and caught it from her father's hands; but its weight proved too much for her little arms, and down it went to the floor with a fearful crash! Susey sprang back with a frightened aspect at the mischief she had done, and Peggy Nonce, dropping her rolling-pin, rushed out of the pantry and beheld the fragments of broken china scattered over the floor. Her face crimsoned with anger.

"What a destructive little minx!" she exclaimed, glaring on the offending Susey. "How dared you meddle with those dishes?"

"Mamma said I might have them to play house with," answered Susey, with flashing eyes.

"Who ever heard of such a thing as giving a child a china tea set to play with?" said Peggy, holding up her bare, brawny arms in amazement.

"My mother has heard of such a thing; and she knows more than fifteen women like you, old aunt Peggy Nonce," returned Miss Susey, with the air of a tragedy queen.

The unusual sounds aroused Mrs. Pimble, who appeared at the parlor door with a goose-quill behind her ear, and a written scroll in her hand. When her eyes fell on the spectacle in the centre of the kitchen, she stamped violently, and exclaimed, in a tempestuous tone, "What does this mean?" Mr. Pimble slunk away into a corner, while Peggy pursed up her lips with a defiant expression, and Susey grew suddenly very meek and blushing-faced.

Mrs. Pimble's eyes followed her husband. "You crawling, contemptible thing," she exclaimed, "have you grown so stupid and insensate that you cannot comprehend a simple question? Again I demand of you, what does this mean?" and she pointed her finger sternly to the broken fragments which strewed the floor.

"Susey said you told her she might have the castors and tea things, and that I was to give them to her," said Mr. Pimble, without lifting his eyes from the hearth he was contemplating.

"Very well, I did tell Susey she might have the articles mentioned to amuse herself with, and it was fitting she should have them, or I had not given my consent. But why do I find them dashed to the floor and rendered useless? Answer me that, you slip-shod sloven?"

With an awful air, Mrs. Pimble folded her arms and looked down upon her husband, who cringed away before her ireful presence, and said, "Susey dropped the waiter."

"Dropped the waiter!" repeated Mrs. Pimble, her anger freshening to a gale. "And could you not prevent her from dropping it? or had you no more sense than to load an avalanche of china on the arms of a little child?"

"She took the waiter from me," said Pimble, in a dogged tone, his eyes still studying the tiles in the hearth.

Mrs. Pimble darted upon him one glance of the most withering contempt, and taking Susey by the hand led her from the room, without deigning to utter another word.

Soon as she disappeared Peggy set about clearing up the broken crockery, and Mr. Pimble crawled off into the recess of a window where the sun might shine on his shivering frame, and at length fell asleep. He had hardly concluded his first dream of fragmentary tea-cups, ere a violent pulling at his draggling coat-tails, which hung over the sill, caused him to wake with a start, when he beheld Peggy Nonce at his side, saying, "Dilly Danforth was come to see him." With a hopeless yawn he crawled out of his sunny nook, and, turning his dull, sleepy eyes toward the disturber of his quiet, demanded, in a surly tone, "what she wanted with him."

"I have come to pay my quarter's rent," said Mrs. Danforth, placing a bank note in his grimy hand. He closed his skinny fingers on it with an eager clutch, and looked in the woman's face with a vague expression of wonder.

"I am glad to get a shilling from you at last," said he, fondling the note; "but this will not quite pay up the last quarter's rent. There's about half a dollar more my due. You can come and do the spring cleaning, and then I'll call matters square between us."

"I thought ten dollars was the sum specified, for three months' rent," remarked Mrs. Danforth.

"It was," returned he, "but you know you had the pig's feet and ears at the fall butchering, and Mrs. Pimble gave you a petticoat in the winter. These things would amount to more than fifty cents, if I put their real value upon them; but as you have cashed this payment, I will, as I said before, call all square with a few days' light work from you."

Mrs. Danforth drew another note from her pocket, and, placing it in his hand, asked him to satisfy himself of his claims upon her, as she could not favor him with her services as he desired, having work of her own to do. Mr. Pimble looked still more astonished when he felt the second note between his fingers. He put it in his pocket and returned her a silver piece. She took it, and, turning to depart, said, "I shall not want your house any longer, Mr. Pimble. I am going to move away to-day."

"Where are you going?" he asked, opening his sleepy eyes very wide.

"I have hired a room in Deacon Allen's cottage," answered she. "It is near the seminary, where William attends school."

Mr. Pimble continued to stare on the woman, with distended eyeballs.

"You have been a very peaceable tenant," he said at length; "I would rent my house cheaper, if you would remain another year."

"I have made my arrangements to move, and would prefer to do so," returned Mrs. Danforth, bidding him good-morning.

He looked very much disconcerted after she was gone, and muttered, he "did not see what had set Dilly Danforth up so, all at once."