ved; but as they carefully descended, Malcolm suddenly
paused.

"What on earth is that noise?" he asked in a puzzled tone. And Anna,
drawing her dainty white skirts closely round her, stood still to
listen.

It was certainly an extraordinary combination of sounds. It seemed at
first as though two people were singing a duet in different tunes and
without any regard to time; there was persistent melody and yet there
was utter discord, and it seemed accompanied by the clanging of
fire-irons.

Presently Anna began to laugh. "Do let us go in and see what it means,"
she whispered. "Somebody--a man, I think--is singing 'Rule Britannia'
and 'Hark, hark, my soul' by turns, and there is a woman talking or
scolding at the same time."

"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. They found out
afterwards that Caleb always worked with cotton-wool in his ears, so
his wife's remonstrance failed to reach him.

"You see, it is like this, sir," he observed to Malcolm afterwards,
when they became better acquainted with each other: "Ma'am's tongue is
like a leaking water-butt. It is bound to drip, drip from week's end to
week's end, and there's no stopping it. It is a way she has, and Kit
and me are bound to put up with it. She means no harm, doesn't Kezia;
she is a hard-working crittur, and does her duty, thoug