30
>I had a notion that those two persons were roundeyed with wonder.
"What does he say?" the lady asked. "What does he mean?"
I had supposed what I said and what I meant were clear enough; but it seemed that the man thought otherwise.
"The great Panjandrum only knows! This does beat anything! I've been in some queer situations, but it looks as if I were in the queerest now. You've made a pretty hash of things."
"Hash! what do you mean by hash? How am I to blame? See how he is dressed!"
"Yes, there I'll give you best he does look the part. Perhaps you'll explain, Mr. Hugh Beckwith, clerk in the dried fruit trade, how you come to be in that rig-out, and in the house you were in?"
I did explain. It took me a considerable time they kept interrupting asking questions which I did not always find it easy to answer. My story seemed to amuse the man; he began laughing before I had gone very far, and kept on laughing all the while, as if what I had suffered struck him as funny. He laughed when I told him about the canvas bag which had fallen on my head, about my dented hat, about my reception when I knocked at the door, about the way those scoundrels treated me. When I told of the sandy-haired creature who had put himself into my clothes, and of how I had been forced into the ridiculous garments which I had on instead, he dropped on to a chair, stretched out his legs in front of him, and laughed as if I were the funniest fellow he had ever encountered. I have heard that one man's misfortunes are another man's jest, but I had never appreciated the fact before.
The lady was not quite so amused, though she also occasionally smiled, and when I was nearly at the end of my narrative she observed:
"You did look so funny as you came running towards me; if I had not been so concerned for you I should have smiled."
She smiled then but I forgave her, for her smile added to her charm.
"I suppose," remarked the man, "you understand all that has happened, Mr. Hugh Beckw
