d that all hot for her, if you had just
told me she was comin' to wash. But some folks always like to be so sly
and underhanded."

"Stop your clack!" said the master, turning toward her with an angry
glance, "and get a bite of something to eat while she is putting her
water on and building a fire. I shall be at home through the day to
superintend matters and see that all is done to my wishes."

Thus saying, he scuffled back to his warm fire in the parlor; for, though
it was a bright morning in the early part of May, and odorous flowers
opening their petals to the genial sunbeams, and groups of singing birds
merry on all the foliage-covered trees, still Esq. Pimble was
cold--always cold, summer and winter. No genial influence could warm his
sluggish blood, or impart a glow to his dry, parchment-colored face.

There he sat; his feet poised on the fender, and a newspaper in his
skinny clutch, from which he seemed to read. Now and then he yawned,
stretched himself, approached the window, gazed forth for a moment with
some anxiety depicted on his expressionless face, and then sunk down in
his cushioned chair again. All the while the washing was going on briskly
in the kitchen. Peggy Nonce had outlived her morning's asperity, and
concluded to bake a batch of dried apple pies, as there must be a fire
kept in the stove for Billy, and it would save burning the wood another
day for the express purpose of cooking operations. So it appeared dame
Peggy, with all her tempers, had one good point at least, and one but
seldom found in servants,--a lookout for her employer's interests. The
bluffy housekeeper was given to gossip, too, as all of her class are; and
who could give her a better synopsis of the private affairs of half the
families in Wimbledon, than Dilly Danforth, the washerwoman, who
performed the drudgery and slop-work in many of the fine homes of the
upper class? But, after all, Peggy had more to give than receive; for by
some means the poor washerwoman did not seem possessed of the "gift of
gab." She was lamentably ignorant on many points where Peggy thought,
with her advantages, _she_ would have been well-informed and able to
answer any question proposed. And so the news-loving housekeeper, though
she remembered her master's interests in the article of firewood, was
fain to forget them in a matter of far more importance, and broached
forth into a long tale of his trials and domestic discomforts. Warming
with her discou