that wheel fixed. He would not feel safe to
start for home with it as it was. He drove off, and Miss Dawes, knowing
from lifelong experience that front doors are merely for show, passed
around the main body of the house and rapped on the door in the ell.
The rap was not answered, though she could hear some one moving about
within, and a shrill voice singing "The Sweet By and By." So she rapped
again and again, but still no one came to the door. At last she ventured
to open it.

A thin woman, with her head tied up in a colored cotton handkerchief,
was in the room, vigorously wielding a broom. She was singing in a high
cracked voice. The opening of the door let in a gust of cold wind which
struck the singer in the back of the neck, and caused her to turn around
hastily.

"Hey?" she exclaimed. "Land sakes! you scare a body to death! Shut that
door quick! I ain't hankering for influenzy. Who are you? What do you
want? Why didn't you knock? Where's my specs?"

She took a pair of spectacles from the mantel shelf, rubbed them
with her apron, and set them on the bridge of her thin nose. Then she
inspected the schoolmistress from head to foot.

"I beg pardon for coming in," shouted Phoebe. "I knocked, but you didn't
hear. You are Mrs. Beasley, aren't you?"

"I don't want none," replied Debby, with emphasis. "So there's no use
your wastin' your breath."

"Don't want--" repeated the astonished teacher. "Don't want what?"

"Hey? I say I don't want none."

"Don't want WHAT?"

"Whatever 'tis you're peddlin'. Books or soap or tea, or whatever 'tis.
I don't want nothin'."

After some strenuous minutes, the visitor managed to make it clear to
Mrs. Beasley's mind that she was not a peddler. She tried to add a word
of further explanation, but it was effort wasted.

"'Tain't no use," snapped Debby, "I can't hear you, you speak so faint.
Wait till I get my horn; it's in the settin' room."

Phoebe's wonder as to what the "horn" might be was relieved by the
widow's appearance, a moment later, with the biggest ear trumpet her
caller had ever seen.

"There, now!" she said, adjusting the instrument and thrusting the
bell-shaped end under the teacher's nose. "Talk into that. If you ain't
a peddler, what be you--sewin' machine agent?"

Phoebe explained that she had come some distance on purpose to see Mrs.
Beasley. She was interested in the Thayers, who used to live in Orham,
particularly in Mr. John Thayer, who died in 1854. Sh