on the brick path, and there was that old gentleman coming round by
the water-butt to the back-door.
'Well?' says he. 'Anything fresh happened?
'For any sake,' says I in a whisper, 'get out of this. She'll hear
if I say more than two words to you. If you've thought of anything
that's to be of any use, get along to the church porch, and I'll be
with you as soon as I can get these things through the rinse-water
and out on the line.'
'But,' he says in a whisper, 'just let me into the parlour for five
minutes, to have a look round and see what the rest of the bowl is
like.'
Then I thought of all the stories I had heard of pedlars' packs, and
a married lady taken unexpectedly, and tricks like that to get into
the house when no one was about. So I thought--
'Well, if you are to go in, I must go in with you,' and I squeezed
my hands out of the suds, and rolled them into my apron and went in,
and him after me.
You never see a man go on as he did. It's my belief he was hours in
that room, going round and round like a squirrel in a cage, picking
up first one bit of trumpery and then another, with two fingers and
a thumb, as carefully as if it had been a _tulle_ bonnet just home
from the draper's, and setting everything down on the very exact
spot he took them up from.
More than once I thought that I had entertained a loony unawares,
when I saw him turn up the cups and plates and look twice as long at
the bottoms of them as he had at the pretty parts that were meant to
show, and all the time he kept saying--'Unique, by Gad, perfectly
unique!' or 'Bristol, as I'm a sinner,' and when he came to the
large blue dish that stands at the back of the bureau, I thought he
would have gone down on his knees to it and worshipped it.
'Square-marked Worcester!' he said to himself in a whisper, speaking
very slowly, as if the words were pleasant in his mouth,
'Square-marked Worcester--an eighteen-inch dish!'
I had as much trouble getting him out of that parlour as you would
have getting a cow out of a clover-patch, and every minute I was
afraid aunt would hear him, or hear the china rattle or something;
but he never rattled a bit, bless you, but was as quiet as a mouse,
and as for carefulness he was like a woman with her first baby. I
didn't dare ask him anything for fear he should answer too loud, and
by-and-by he went up to the church porch and waited for me.
He had a brown-paper parcel with him, a big one, and I thought
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