"No; they shut up their faces like steel-traps. Once or twice, maybe, I saw a dyin-away wrinkle round a feller's mouth, like the rings in the water when you throw a stone in; but they soon faded away, and they looked as smooth and deceitful as a pool of deep water itself agin."
"They tasted and tried the articles, of course, before they bought?"
"Yes; some of them had their mouths daubed, like children suckin 'lasses candy; and some of their big noses was stuck full of Bohea tea, outside and in, like old Pete when he's had a good feed of chopped rye and cut straw."
"And what sort of a man was the auctioneer?"
"Why, his mouth went so fast when he got to 'going, going, going,' that you couldn't say stop, if you had had your mouth fixed; but his face I didn't like at all."
"What was there in his face objectionable?"
"O! I can't tell exactly, it looked out of all sort of nature; a good deal I don't know howish. One thing I'll be sworn to, you would never see such a one in old Kentuck; there every man wears his Sunday face on week days."
"I suppose you mean that the man was disfigured with affectation," said Chevillere.
"You've hit it, stranger, you've hit it; that's the very word I wanted to be at, but I couldn't get it out. Well, from the vendue I took a stroll round town, to see the lads and lasses; how they carried their heads in these parts, and maybe to see how they carried on their sparkin in a big town like this; for, to tell you the truth, that's one of the things I never could see how they carried on here."
"How did you manage such things in the west? Is there any thing peculiar in your method?"