Your quotation is, as I supposed, all wrong. The text is not "Which his 'owls was organs." When Mr. Harris went into an empty dog-kennel, to spare his sensitive nature the anguish of overhearing Mrs. Harris's exclamations on the occasion of the birth of her first child (the Princess Royal of the Harris family), "he never took his hands away from his ears, or came out once, till he was showed the baby." On encountering that spectacle, he was (being of a weakly constitution) "took with fits." For this distressing complaint he was medically treated; the doctor "collared him, and laid him on his back upon the airy stones"—please to observe what follows—"and she was told, to ease her mind, his 'owls was organs."
That is to say, Mrs. Harris, lying exhausted on her bed, in the first sweet relief of freedom from pain, merely covered with the counterpane, and not yet "put comfortable," hears a noise apparently proceeding from the backyard, and says, in a flushed and hysterical manner: "What 'owls are those? Who is a-'owling? Not my ugebond?" Upon which the doctor, looking round one of the bottom posts of the bed, and taking Mrs. Harris's pulse in a reassuring manner, says, with much admirable presence of mind: "Howls, my dear madam?—no, no, no! What are we thinking of? Howls, my dear Mrs. Harris? Ha, ha, ha! Organs, ma'am, organs. Organs in the streets, Mrs. Harris; no howls."
Yours faithfully, [C. D.]
FOOTNOTES:
[127] One of the pleasantest, to me, of Dickens's letters is that in which, extravagant anti-Tory as he was, he refuses to let a contributor echo the too common grudges at Lockhart (see inf. under Stevenson). But it is very short, and perhaps of no general interest.
[128] Referring, I suppose, to the well-known and "inimitable" (but by no means indispensable) flourish of his signature.
[129] "The comedy" is Bulwer-Lytton's Not so Bad as we Seem, acted by Dickens and other amateurs for charity at Devonshire House seventy years ago, and about to be reproduced in loco as these proofs are being revised.