Chapter XXXIX

“Ah, dearie me, but it’s a lonesome life, after all,” sighed Mrs. Griffin.

The good soul was sitting by the comfortable stove in the commodious kitchen of Delaney House, intent upon the concoction of some savory broth that was simmering on the stove. It was on the evening of the day that Mr. Delaney had saved Aline Rodney from drowning.

The bright, sunny morning had ended in a dreary, overcast evening, with hints of snow in the air. The warm, spacious kitchen was very comfortable, but it was intensely quiet and still, even to dreariness. The audible ticking of the clock, and the soft purr of the little gray kitten at Mrs. Griffin’s feet, seemed to make the stillness and quiet even more marked and oppressive to her peculiar mood.

“It’s a lonesome life,” she repeated. “It is hard even for me, and I do not see how Mr. Delaney bears it at all, used as he has been to society and amusement. Sometimes I fairly long for the sight of a friendly face and the sound of a kind voice besides my master’s. I never felt the dreariness of my life as much as I have done since Miss Rodney came and went away. Spoiled child as she was, she brought a bit of life into the house!”

She sighed and mechanically lifted the lid of the stew-pan and stirred the savory broth with a long-handled spoon.

“Tap! Tap! Tap!”

That ghostly sound broke so suddenly upon the silence of the room, that Mrs. Griffin gave a violent start and dropped her long spoon upon the floor with a hideous clatter, disturbing kitty’s peaceful slumbers by a thump upon her little pink nose, accompanied by a few drops of hot broth that sent her pattering into the corner with a spiteful meow. The good woman mechanically reached for the spoon and looked toward the door.

“Tap! Tap!” came the low knocking again, with as ghostly a sound as ever Poe’s fabled raven produced.

Mrs. Griffin stared at the closed door with an air of stupid amazement, and made no move to open it.

“Whoever can it be?” she asked aloud, and a squeaky, peculiar voice from outside, answered immediately:

“Open the door, my good woman, and see!”

“What impudence! There, then, I won’t do it!” replied Mrs. Griffin, who, although dying of curiosity to see her visitor, knew better than to admit any one within the walls of Delaney House.

“You’re the first woman, then, that I ever knew to turn a poor peddler from the door, and it’ll be to your sorrow as you did so,” replied a bantering voice outside. “I have a basketful of notions, and I’m just from New York with the biggest bargains of the season. Come, don’t be churlish, mistress. Open the door, and let me come in and warm my frozen fingers, even if you won’t buy one of my nice lace collars.”

Mrs. Griffin’s eyes had brightened at the mention of the peddler. The majority of women have an unexplainable propensity for buying from peddlers, and Mrs. Griffin was no exception to the rule. Besides, she was dying of loneliness and _ennui_. She intensely desired to speak to some one, and to have better companionship, if only for an hour, than the purring gray kitten.

She hesitated. And we have always heard--have we not, reader?--that the woman who hesitates is lost. She remembered that her stock of pins and needles and tapes and buttons needed replenishing. Why not embrace this excellent opportunity for the purpose? She might easily do so, and Mr. Delaney be none the wiser, and no harm done. She would take care that the harmless peddler did not penetrate beyond the kitchen.

The cheery, seductive voice of the person outside sounded pleasantly in her hearing. She felt that she would be all the better for a little human contact with that world from which she was so closely secluded.

She softly turned the key and opened the door, meaning to have some little colloquy with the peddler before she admitted her; but that worthy frustrated her intention by immediately stepping across the threshold, with the proverbial impudence of the class.

“So you thought better of your first intentions, did you?” she said, genially, to the astonished mistress of the kitchen. “Second thoughts are best, aren’t they? Well, you were wise to let me in. I shall sell you the biggest bargain of the season.”

And then she laughed, and set her basket down upon the floor, and warmed her brown fingers by the stove.

Mrs. Griffin was dumfounded by the ease, not to say impudence, of the female peddler, who already had taken a seat and was gazing about the large apartment with careless curiosity.

“You must please not to laugh so loud,” she said. “If my master hears you he will come down and turn you out. I should not have let you in anyhow, only that I needed some things in your line. Strangers are not allowed in here. You shouldn’t have entered the grounds.”

“I did not know there were any orders against it. You see, I’m a stranger about here, and seeing such a fine large house I naturally thought to myself, ‘Here’s the place to sell my nice goods to the ladies.’ But if there’s any offense, ma’am, I’ll humbly take my leave,” said this artful old woman, beginning to replace the tempting things she had drawn from her heavy basket.

“Well, well, let me have my buttons and things first,” said Mrs. Griffin, who had not expected to be so soon taken at her word. “You may show me your things, only be quiet about it. I shouldn’t care to have my master disturbed.”

“And your mistress, hey? Wouldn’t she like to buy some of my pretty laces?”

“There isn’t any mistress. There’s only my master and me. I’m cook and housekeeper both,” Mrs. Griffin replied, as she poised a black lace cap on her fingers, and mentally wondered if it wouldn’t be becoming to her.

They had the usual haggling, the old woman good-humoredly putting down her goods to Mrs. Griffin’s own prices, remarking as each new purchase was laid on the pile at the housekeeper’s elbow: “I told you I would sell you the biggest bargain of the season. They don’t call me Cheap Jane for nothing!”

“Is that your name? How funny!” said the housekeeper, laughing.

“That’s what they call me,” said the female peddler. “Mrs. Broadcloth is my real name, though.”

Mrs. Griffin had to laugh again. She thought that the name of Broadcloth was even more amusing than that of Cheap Jane. There was a dry humor about the peddler that she rather enjoyed after her forced seclusion from companionship with her kind.

“Perhaps you’d like a cup of hot tea before you start out again, Mrs. Broadcloth,” said she, with reckless hospitality.

“Thank you kindly,” was the reply, and the old woman drew out a short, black pipe from, some recess under her coarse cloak. “While you draw the tea, I suppose you will let me smoke my pipe by your fire,” she said.

“Certainly,” assented Mrs. Griffin, and then her heart suddenly misgave her.

It occurred to her that, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, she was making almost too lavish a show of hospitality.

“Only suppose that Mr. Delaney should happen in! It isn’t likely he will, but then I’ve heard say that the most unlikely things are always happening,” she thought, apprehensively to herself.

“I will step up to his room and see if he wants anything,” was her next thought, with a view to forestalling his possible intrusion on the prohibited guest.

Fortune favored her artful design. At that moment a bell rung from the upper room that Mr. Delaney occupied as a bed-chamber.

Mrs. Griffin turned to Cheap Jane, who was contentedly puffing away at her stubby pipe.

“There is my master’s bell now,” she said. “Will you just set here all quiet while I step up and see what he wants?”

“Yes, go. Don’t mind me,” replied Mrs. Broadcloth, affably.

The housekeeper opened the door into the hall, closed it carefully behind her, and went up to Mr. Delaney’s room.

To her surprise, although it was barely six o’clock, he had retired to bed. There was a feverish flush on his face, and his dark eyes gleamed restlessly.

“Oh, Mr. Delaney, you are ill,” she exclaimed.

“Hardly that,” he replied, with a forced smile; “but I am certainly somewhat the worse for the wetting I received this morning.”

“Oh, sir, you should see a physician!” she exclaimed, alarmed at his feverish looks.

“No; the last one did me harm enough by his long tongue,” Mr. Delaney answered, angrily. “I will have nothing of the kind. I need no one--I shall be all right in the morning.”

She saw that persistence would only irritate him, and dropped the subject.

“Can I do nothing for you?” she inquired, anxiously.

“No; I have myself taken some drops that will soon cool my fever. I shall not take any supper; but, after a while, you may bring me a cup of tea--nothing else.”

She beat a hasty retreat, sorry for his sickness, but reflecting that it stood her in good stead at this particular time, when her loneliness had led her into such imprudence as admitting a human being under the tabooed portals of Delaney House.

“I will go and make the tea, and get her away as soon as I can,” she thought, hurrying down the wide stairway, along the hall, and so into the kitchen again, where she had left Cheap Jane contentedly, puffing at her pipe.

“Well, now, Mistress Broadcloth, I will put the tea to draw,” she began, then stopped and stared, and rubbed her hand across her eyes.

The great kitchen was empty, save for the gray kitten under the stove, purring away in lazy contentment. The old woman and the big basket were vanished from the scene as if they had never been. The door by which she had entered a little while ago, stood wide open, letting in the cold and the gathering darkness.

Mrs. Griffin ran down the steps and into the grounds in search of the missing peddler; but the darkness and a haze of snow were beginning to fall together, and they soon drove her into the house again.

“Ah, well-a-day! the strange old creature has taken herself off without her tea, and just as well, perhaps, for I was on needles and pins for fear of being caught in her company,” commented the housekeeper.