"
"I believe you are right," was Malcolm's answer. "Take care of that
last step, child, it is quite worn away." And then, as they stood
side by side in the dismal little area, he looked vainly for a bell.
Finally, he rapped so smartly at the door with Anna's sunshade that
they distinctly heard an irate voice say, "Drat their imperence,"
and a tall, bony-looking woman, in a flowered gingham dress and a
very red face, bounced out on them.
She was so tall and so excessively bony, and so altogether
aggressive-looking, that Anna felt inclined to hide herself behind
Malcolm. Indeed, he remarked afterwards himself, that he had never
seen a finer specimen of a muscular Christian, barring the
Christianity, in his life.
"What's your pleasure?" observed the Amazon, folding her arms in a
defiant manner, while through the open door they could now hear
distinctly the cobbler's subdued and singularly toneless voice
meandering on--"O'er earth's green fields, and ocean's wave-beat
shore."
"Deuce take the man!" continued the woman wrathfully. "Will you hold
your old doddering tongue, Caleb, and let the gentlefolk speak!" But
there was no cessation of the dreary, dirge-like sounds.
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