laugh.

Both turned, and the young clergyman started at seeing the wooden-legged
man close behind him, morosely grave as a criminal judge with a
mustard-plaster on his back. In the present case the mustard-plaster
might have been the memory of certain recent biting rebuffs and
mortifications.

"Wouldn't think it was I who laughed would you?"

"But who was it you laughed at? or rather, tried to laugh at?" demanded
the young clergyman, flushing, "me?"

"Neither you nor any one within a thousand miles of you. But perhaps you
don't believe it."

"If he were of a suspicious temper, he might not," interposed the man in
gray calmly, "it is one of the imbecilities of the suspicious person to
fancy that every stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as
smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way, is secretly
making him his butt. In some moods, the movements of an entire street,
as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic
jeer at him. In short, the suspicious man kicks himself with his own
foot."

"Whoever can do that, ten to one he saves other folks' sole-leather,"
said the wooden-legged man with a crusty attempt at humor. But with
augmented grin and squirm, turning directly upon the young clergyman,
"you still think it was _you_ I was laughing at, just now. To prove your
mistake, I will tell you what I _was_ laughing at; a story I happened to
call to mind just then."

Whereupon, in his porcupine way, and with sarcastic details, unpleasant
to repeat, he related a story, which might, perhaps, in a good-natured
version, be rendered as follows:

A certain Frenchman of New Orleans, an old man, less slender in purse
than limb, happening to attend the theatre one evening, was so charmed
with the character of a faithful wife, as there represented to the life,
that nothing would do but he must marry upon it. So, marry he did, a
beautiful girl from Tennessee, who had first attracted his attention by
her liberal mould, and was subsequently recommended to him through her
kin, for her equally liberal education and disposition. Though large,
the praise proved not too much. For, ere long, rumor more than
corroborated it, by whispering that the lady was liberal to a fault. But
though various circumstances, which by most Benedicts would have been
deemed all but conclusive, were duly recited to the old Frenchman by his
friends, yet such was his confidence that not a syllable would he
credit,