He was so very, very funny as _Major Wellington de Boots_ in "Everybody's Friend"; his immense self-satisfaction, his stiff little strut, his martial ardor, his wild-eyed cowardice were trying enough, but when he deliberately acted _at_ you--oh, dear! He would look me straight in the eye and make faces at me, until I sobbed at every breath. Then he had a wretched little trick of rising slowly on his toes and sinking back to his heels again, while he cocked his head to one side so like a knowing old dicky-bird that he simply convulsed me with laughter.
I was his _Mrs. Swansdown_, and I had kept steady and never lost a line, until we came to the scene where, as my landlord and would-be husband, he brought some samples of wall-paper for me to choose from. Where, in heaven's name, he ever found those rolls of paper I can't imagine. They were not merely hideous but grotesque as well, and were received with shouts of laughter by the house.
With true shopman's touch, he would send each piece unrolling toward the footlights, while holding up its breadth of ugliness for _Mrs. Swansdown's_ inspection and approval, and every piece that he thus displayed he greeted at first sight with words of hearty admiration for its beauty and perfect suitability, until, catching disapproval on the widow's face, he in the same breath, with lightning swift hypocrisy, turned his sentence into contemptuous disparagement, and fairly shook his audience with laughter at the quickness of his change of opinion.
At last he unfurled a piece of paper whose barbarity of design and criminality of color I remember yet. The dead-white ground was widely and alternately striped with a dark Dutch blue and a dingy chocolate brown, and about the blue stripes there twined a large pumpkin-colored morning-glory, while from end to end the brown stripes were solemnly pecked at by small magenta birds. The thing was as ludicrous as it was ugly--an Indian clay-idol might have cracked into smiles of derision over its artistic qualities.
Then Mr. Owens, bursting into encomiums over its desirability as a hanging for the drawing-room walls of a modest little retreat, caught my frown, and continued: "Er--er, or perhaps you'd prefer it as trousering?" then, delightedly: "Yes--yes, you're quite right, it _is_ a neat thing--cut full at the knee, eh? Close at the foot, yes, yes, I see, regular peg-tops--great idea! I'll send you a pair at once. Oh, good Lord! what have I done! I--I--mean, I'll have a pair myself, _Mrs. Swansdown_, cut from this very piece of your sweet selection!"