“This ain’t no princely hall with all its gorgeous paraphanaly, as the play-bills says; but it’s what I calls a’ ‘interior,’ which for meller comfort and cheerful surroundin’s ain’t to be ekalled by no other ‘flat’ on the boundless, never-endin’ stage of this existence!” And as the exuberant Mr. Twiggs rendered this observation, he felt called upon to smile and bow most graciously to an invisible audience, whose wild approval he in turn interpreted by an enthusiastic clapping of his hands and the cry of “Ongcore!” in a dozen different keys—this strange acclamation being made the more grotesque by a great green parrot perched upon the mantel, which, in a voice less musical than penetrating, chimed in with “Hooray for Twiggs and Tudens!” a very great number of times. “Tude’s a queer girl,” said Mr. Twiggs, subsiding into a reflective calm, broken only by the puffing of his pipe, and the occasional articulation of a thought, as it loitered through his mind. “Tude’s a queer girl!—a werry queer girl!” repeated Mr. Twiggs, pausing again, with a long whiff at his pipe, and marking the graceful swoop the smoke made as it dipped and disappeared up the wide, black-throated chimney; and then, as though dropping into confidence with the great fat kettle on the coals, that steamed and bubbled with some inner paroxysm, he added, “And queer and nothink short, is the lines for Tude, eh? “Now s’posin’,” he continued, leaning forward and speaking in a tone whose careful intonation might have suggested a more than ordinary depth of wisdom and sagacity,—“s’posin’ a pore chap like me, as ain’t no property only this-’ere ‘little crooked house,’ as Tude calls it, and some o’ the properties I ’andles at the Drury—as I was a-sayin’,—s’posin’ now a’ old rough chap like me was jest to tell her all about herself, and who she is and all, and not no kith or kin o’ mine, let alone a daughter, as _she_ thinks—What do you reckon now ’ud be the upshot, eh?” And as Mr. Twiggs propounded this mysterious query he jabbed the poker prankishly in the short-ribs of the grate, at which the pot, as though humoring a joke it failed to comprehend wholly, set up a chuckling of such asthmatic violence that its smothered cachinnations tilted its copper lid till Mr. Twiggs was obliged to dash a cup of water in its face.