"I--I thought it would be 'andy
to 'ang the 'ats on."

"Dear, dear," said the old gentleman, "why do you people dabble in
matters you don't understand? Come here, Tweddle, and let me show you.
Can't you _see_ what a miserable sham the thing is--a cheap, tawdry
imitation of the splendid classic type? Why, by merely exhibiting such a
thing, you're vitiating public taste, sir--corrupting it."

Leander did not quite follow this rebuke, which he thought was probably
based upon the goddess's antecedents.

"Was she reelly as bad as that, sir?" he said. "I wasn't aware so, or I
shouldn't give any offence to customers by letting her stay here."

As he spoke he saw the indefinable indications in the statue's face
which denoted that it was instinct once more with life and intelligence,
and he was horrified at the thought that the latter part of the
conversation might have been overheard.

"But I've always understood," he said, hastily, "that the party this
represents was puffickly correct, however free some of the others might
have been; and I suppose that's the costume of the period she's in, and
very becoming it is, I'm sure, though gone out since."

"Bah!" said the old gentleman, "it's poor art. I'll show you _where_ the
thing is bad. I happen to understand something of these things. Just
observe how the top of the head is out of drawing; look at the lowness
of the forehead, and the distance between the eyes; all the canons of
proportion ignored--absolutely ignored!"

What further strictures this rash old gentleman was preparing to pass
upon the statue will never be known now, for Tweddle already thought he
could discern a growing resentment in her face, under so much candour.
He could not stand by and allow so excellent a customer to be crushed on
the floor of his saloon, and he knew the Venus quite capable of this:
was she not perpetually threatening such a penalty, on much slighter
provocation?

He rushed between the unconscious man and his fate. "I think you said
your hair cut?" he said, and laid violent hands upon the critic, forced
him protesting into a chair, throttled him with a towel, and effectually
diverted his attention by a series of personal remarks upon the top of
his head.

The victim, while he was being shampooed, showed at first an alarming
tendency to revert to the subject of the goddess's defects, but Leander
was able to keep him in check by well-timed jets of scalding water and
ice-cold sprays,