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At the kitchen door he was confronted by a tall gaunt woman of middle age with a teapot in her hands.

“Afternoon, ma’am. Have you anything to sell?” began Harvey Witlow, tilting his hat with a confident affable air. The tall woman was cleanly dressed, a superior person; her hair was grey. She gazed at him.

“It’s cold,” he continued. She looked at him as uncomprehendingly as a mouse might look at a gravestone.

“I’ll buy any mottal thing, ma’am. Except trouble; I’m full up wi’ that already. Eggs? Fowls?”

“I’ve not seen you before,” commented Mrs. Sadgrove a little bleakly, in a deep husky voice.

“No, ’tis the first time as ever I drove in this part. To tell you the truth, ma’am, I’m new to the business. Six months. I was in the war a year ago. Now I’m trying to knock up a connection. Difficult work. Things are very quiet.”

Mrs. Sadgrove silently removed the lid of the teapot, inspected the interior of the pot with an intent glance, and then replaced the lid as if she had seen a blackbeetle there.

“Ah, well,” sighed the higgler.”You’ve a neat little farm here, ma’am.”

“It’s quiet enough,” said she.

“Sure it is, ma’am. Very lonely.”

“And it’s difficult work, too.” Mrs. Sadgrove almost smiled.

“Sure it is, ma’am; but you does it well, I can see. O, you’ve some nice little ricks of corn, ah! I does well enough at the dealing now and again, but it’s teasy work, and mostly I don’t earn enough to keep my horse in shoe leather.”

“I’ve a few eggs, perhaps,” said she.

“I could do with a score or two, ma’am, if you could let me have ’em.”

“You’ll have to come all my way if I do.”

“Name your own price, ma’am, if you don’t mind trading with me.”

“Mind! Your money’s as good as my own, isn’t it?”

“It must be, ma’am. That’s meaning no disrespects to you,” the young higgler assured her hastily, and was thereupon invited to enter the kitchen.

A stone floor with two or three mats; open hearth with burning logs; a big dresser painted brown, carrying a row of white cups on brass hooks and shelves of plates overlapping each other like the scales of fish. A dark settle half hid a flight of stairs with a small gate at the top. Under the window a black sofa, deeply indented, invited you a little repellingly, and in the middle of the room stood a large table, exquisitely scrubbed, with one end of it laid for tea. Evidently a living-room as well as kitchen. A girl, making toast at the fire, turned as the higgler entered. Beautiful she was: red hair, a complexion like the inside of a nut, blue eyes, and the hands of a lady. He saw it all at once, jacket of bright green wool, black dress, grey stockings and shoes, and forgot his errand, her mother, his fifty pounds, Sophy—momentarily he forgot everything. The girl stared strangely at him. He was tall, clean shaven, with a loop of black hair curling handsomely over one side of his brow.

“Good afternoon,” said Harvey Witlow, as softly as if he had entered a church.

“Some eggs, Mary,” Mrs. Sadgrove explained. The girl laid down her toasting fork. She was less tall than her mother, whom she resembled only enough for the relationship to be noted. Silently she crossed the kitchen and opened a door that led into a dairy. Two pans of milk were creaming on a bench there, and on the flags were two great baskets filled with eggs.

“How many are there?” asked Mrs. Sadgrove, and the girl replied: “Fifteen score, I think.”