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.