llow's picture was slightly damaged; and
when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I
had privately suggested to you that we hadn't any frames, and that
if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, etc., etc., etc., the
madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. Then she
said:

"How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--"

"Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a
man who--"

She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
the hall, so she took it out of George. I am glad of that, because
it saved the babies.

Clemens used to admit, at a later day, that his education did not advance
by leaps and bounds, but gradually, very gradually; and it used to give
him a pathetic relief in those after-years, when that sweet presence had
gone out of his life, to tell the way of it, to confess over-fully,
perhaps, what a responsibility he had been to her.

He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity from
her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut between their
bedroom and the bathroom, he was in there dressing and shaving,
accompanying these trying things with language intended only for the
strictest privacy; how presently, when he discovered a button off the
shirt he intended to put on, he hurled it through the window into the
yard with appropriate remarks, followed it with another shirt that was in
the same condition, and added certain collars and neckties and bath-room
requisites, decorating the shrubbery outside, where the people were going
by to church; how in this extreme moment he heard a slight cough and
turned to find that the door was open! There was only one door to the
bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her. He felt pale and sick, and
sat down for a few moments to consider. He decided to assume that she
was asleep, and to walk out and through the room, head up, as if he had
nothing on his conscience. He attempted it, but without success.
Half-way across the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last
terrific remark. He turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him
with a look as withering as she could find in her gentle soul. The humor
of it struck him.

"Livy," he said, "did it sound like that?"

"Of course it did," she said, "only worse. I wanted you to hear just how
it sounded."