With that I took her little hand in my yaller glove, and I put it into my arm as genteel as could be, and walked straight into t'other room with her. She sot down on one of the settees, and I jest pulled one of the footstools close up to her, and there we both sot as sociable as could be till the folks all come back agin. Arter that I had to git up and give a pale-looking gal my seat; but I kept a standing up by the eend of the settee, till Cousin Beebe come up tu me, and, sez he-- "Cousin Slick, jest step this way a minit." He went right between the silk winder curtins into the place where the bushes, and the birds, and the swarry was, and sez he-- "Cousin Jonathan, did you know that the straps to your pantaloons have slipped out from under you boots?" "You don't say so," sez I, a looking down at hisen, tu see how he fixed them, for I didn't want him to think that I'd left 'em so on purpose; but I felt awful streaked when I see his was buttoned under the sole of his dancing pumps. "Here, jest lift up your foot," sez he. I histed my foot up, and he jirked the strops down quick enough; but I swan if I didn't feel as if he'd corded me up tu see how long I'd keep. I didn't wonder the chaps sidled and wriggled about so when they tried tu dance, a feller couldn't take a regular strong step tu save his life, girt up in a pair of these new-fashioned trousers. "Look a here, cousin Beebe," sez I, jest as he was a going out, and I pinted tu the naked marble woman a standing among the bushes, with the light a coming in from t'other room onto her, till she looked like a harnsome ghost a walking among the bushes by moonlight; "if you'll take a fool's advice you'll buy a frock and petticoat for that purty swarry of yourn, afore you have another party. How should you feel if some of them young gals was tu cum in here?" John bust out a larfin, and I raly thought the critter would never stop. "Now what are you a haw-hawing about?" sez I, sort a wrathy, "because I cum here with my trousers slipped up a leetle. I don't s'pose anybody but you see them." "Oh never think about it," sez he, a biting in, but the tears kept a running down his cheeks, for all that. "If they did see it, they'll set it down for the eccentricity of genius, as the young ladies say. You literary chaps can do a'most anything now-a-days." "I begin to think we can," sez I, for jest that minit I remembered all that tarnal sweet critter, Miss Miles, had been a saying to me, and I looked down tu see if the sprig of myrtle was in my button-hole yit.