"Away with you, stranger!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger, "avaunt and
skedaddle! Come here never more! You agents are making me crazy and
breaking my heart, and I beg that you'll trot from my door! I've
bought nutmeg graters, shoelaces and gaiters, I've bought everything
from a lamp to a lyre; I've bought patent heaters and saws and egg
beaters and stoves that exploded and set me afire."

"You're laboring under a curious blunder," the stranger protested; "I
know very well that agents are trying, and dames tired of buying; but
be not uneasy--I've nothing to sell."

"I'm used to that story--it's whiskered and hoary," replied Mrs.
Granger, "you want to come in, and then when you enter, in tones of a
Stentor you'll brag of your polish for silver and tin. Or maybe you're
dealing in unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the
corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for
the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd
better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you
look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd
spend it for drink."

"My name," said the stranger, who backed out of danger--the woman had
reached for the broom by the wall--"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new
preacher; I just dropped around for a pastoral call."