"Why, my dear professor!" says he, walkin' up and givin' me the inside-brother grip with one hand and the old-college-chum shoulder-pat with the other. I squints across the way, and there was the Major and the girls, catchin' their breath and takin' it all in, so I sees it's no use throwin' a bluff. "How's the Bishop?" says I. "You've made a bad break; but I guess it's a bit too late to hedge." He only chuckles, like he always does. "Your figures of speech, professor, are too subtle for me, as usual. However, I suppose you are as glad to see me as I am to find you." "Just what I was meanin' to spring next," says I, pullin' up a rocker for him. We chins awhile there, and the Bishop tells me how's he been out to lay a cornerstone, and thought he'd drop in on his old friend, Major Binger. "Well, well, what a charming place you have here!" says he. "You must take me all over it, professor. I want to see if you've shown as good taste on the inside as you apparently have on the out." And before I has time to say a word about Jarvis's Aunt 'Melie, he has me by the arm and we're headed for the parlor. I hadn't even opened the door before, but we blazes right in, runs up the shades, throws open the shutters, and stands by for a look. Say, it was worth it! That was the most ladyfied room I ever put me foot in. First place, I never see so many crazy lookin' little chairs, or bow-legged tables, or fancy tea-cups before in my life. There wa'n't a thing you could sit on without havin' to call the upholstery man in afterward. Even the gilt sofa looked like it ought to have been in a picture. But what had me button-eyed was the wall decorations. If I hadn't been ridin' on the sprinker for so long I'd thought it was time for me to hunt a D. T. institute right then. First off I couldn't make 'em out at all; but after the shock wore away I see they were dolls, dozens of 'em, hangin' all over the walls in rows and clusters, like hams in a pork shop. And say, that was the wooziest collection ever bunched together! They wa'n't ordinary Christmas-tree dolls, the store kind. Every last one of 'em was home-made, white cotton heads, with hand-painted faces. Course, I tumbled. This was some of that half-batty Aunt 'Melie's work. This was what she'd put in her time on. And she sure had produced. For face paintin' it was well done, I guess, only she must have been shut up so long away from folks that she'd sort of forgot just how they looked. Some of the heads had sunbonnets on, and some nightcaps; but they were all the same shape, like a hardshell clam, flat side to. The eyes were painted about twice life-size--some rolled up, some canted down, some squintin' sideways, and a lot was just cross-eye. There was green eyes, yellow eyes, pink eyes, and the regular kinds. They gave me the creeps.