eliberately acted _at_ you--oh, dear! He would look me straight in the
eye and make faces at me, until I sobbed at every breath. Then he had a
wretched little trick of rising slowly on his toes and sinking back to
his heels again, while he cocked his head to one side so like a knowing
old dicky-bird that he simply convulsed me with laughter.

I was his _Mrs. Swansdown_, and I had kept steady and never lost a line,
until we came to the scene where, as my landlord and would-be husband, he
brought some samples of wall-paper for me to choose from. Where, in
heaven's name, he ever found those rolls of paper I can't imagine. They
were not merely hideous but grotesque as well, and were received with
shouts of laughter by the house.

With true shopman's touch, he would send each piece unrolling toward the
footlights, while holding up its breadth of ugliness for _Mrs.
Swansdown's_ inspection and approval, and every piece that he thus
displayed he greeted at first sight with words of hearty admiration for
its beauty and perfect suitability, until, catching disapproval on the
widow's face, he in the same breath, with lightning swift hypocrisy,
turned his sentence into contemptuous disparagement, and fairly shook his
audience with laughter at the quickness of his change of opinion.

At last he unfurled a piece of paper whose barbarity of design and
criminality of color I remember yet. The dead-white ground was widely and
alternately striped with a dark Dutch blue and a dingy chocolate brown,
and about the blue stripes there twined a large pumpkin-colored
morning-glory, while from end to end the brown stripes were solemnly
pecked at by small magenta birds. The thing was as ludicrous as it was
ugly--an Indian clay-idol might have cracked into smiles of derision over
its artistic qualities.

Then Mr. Owens, bursting into encomiums over its desirability as a
hanging for the drawing-room walls of a modest little retreat, caught my
frown, and continued: "Er--er, or perhaps you'd prefer it as trousering?"
then, delightedly: "Yes--yes, you're quite right, it _is_ a neat
thing--cut full at the knee, eh? Close at the foot, yes, yes, I see,
regular peg-tops--great idea! I'll send you a pair at once. Oh, good
Lord! what have I done! I--I--mean, I'll have a pair myself, _Mrs.
Swansdown_, cut from this very piece of your sweet selection!"

Ah, well! that ended the scene so far as my help went. The shrieking
audience drowned my noise for a ti