Didn't the puckers go out of her face when I said this! She was mollified down in a minit. I don't s'pose she ever had twenty years took off from her good fifty so slick afore in her hull life; but it aint human natur to come out all to once,--at any rate, it aint an old maid's natur, when her back once gits up. So when I see her darned thin lips begin to pucker and twist into sort of a smile, I let off a leetle more soft sodder, that wilted her down like a cabbage-leaf in the sun; and then sez I, a pinting to the glass-box-- "Come, now, s'posing we strike up a trade. I've took a sort of a sneaking notion to that ere new-fashioned side-saddle. So if you'll throw in the tackling, I'll give you ten dollars for it, cash on the nail." "That what?" said she, a looking fust at me and then at the saddle, with her mouth a leetle open and her eyes sticking out like peeled onions. "That what?" "Why, that are saddle," sez I, beginning to feel my dander rise. "That saddle," sez she, "that saddle; why, sir, did you take that pair of French corsets for a saddle?" With that she slumped down into a chair, and kivered her face with both hands, and larfed till I raly thought the critter would a split her sides. The way she wriggled back'rd and fored, tee-heeing and haw-hawing, was enough to make a Presbyterian Missionary swear like a sea captain. "That saddle!" sez she, a looking up from between her hands, and then letting off the fun again as bad as ever. "That saddle! _Oh, dear, I shall die._ Did you really take that pair of _French corsets_ for a side-saddle, sir? Oh, dear, I shall die a larfin!" Didn't I feel streaked though! Only think what an etarnal coot I had made of myself, to take a pair of gal's corsets for a side-saddle. "Darn the things," sez I, and it was as much as I could du to keep from putting foot to the glass case, and kicking it into the street. I felt the blood bile up into my face, and when the old maid bust out agin, and I see a hull grist of purty faces come a swarming to a glass door, that they'd hauled back a curtain from, I could have skulked through a knot hole, I felt so dreadful mean. But by-am-by I begun to think they had more cause to be ashamed than I had. Who on arth would ever have thought them stiff indecent looking things were made for a delicate gal to wear? I felt dreadfully though, to think that I'd been a talking about a gal's under-riggin, to a woman so long, but after a few minits I begun to think that I needn't fret myself much about that. The woman that stuck them things out in the street for young fellers to look at, needn't go off in a fit of "the dreadful suz," because a chap asks the price of them. "So, who cares!" sez I.