While she was thus gracefully employed, the agonized artist, his face suffused with blushes and fairly ghastly with an enforced smile, was painfully struggling to abstract himself, by changing the places of things, shifting the position of his easel, prying in a lost way into lumbered corners, and pretending to be in search of something, —ingenious, but unable to disguise his chagrin. He pranced with his legs, and tumbled his hair, and twitched at his whiskers more than ever, as he said,—
"My dear," (and the boy had called her Mamma; so, then, it must be a fancy sketch, after all,) "my dear, no doubt the gentleman is more a cosmopolite than yourself, and blessed with more facility in adapting himself to circumstances."
"You know, Madam," I came to his assistance, "we Americans have a famous trick of living and enjoying a little in advance, of 'going ahead' of the hour, as it were. We find in San Francisco rather what it promises to be than what it is, and we take it at its word."
"Oh, pray, don't mention Americans! I positively 'ate the hodious people. I confess I 'ave a hinsurmountable prejudice hagainst the race; you are not haware that I am Hinglish. I think I might endure heven San Fanfrisko, if it were not for the Americans. Are you an American?"
Alternating between the pallor of rage and the flush of mortification, her husband now turned, with a calmness that had something of desperation in it, and saved me the trouble and the pain of replying, by asking, in the frigid tone of one who resented my presence as the cause of his shame,—
"Did you wish to see me on business, Sir? and have you been waiting long?"
"The success with which your charming little boy has entertained me has made the time seem very short. I could willingly have waited longer."
That last remark was a mere contretemps. I did not mean to be as severe as he evidently thought me, for he bowed haughtily and resentfully.
I came at once to business,—drew from my pocket the engraving I had brought,—"Could he copy that for me?"
"How?—in miniature or life-size?—ivory or canvas?"