Into this shop, however, I went to get little Mary Williams her picture-book; and I can’t but say I was very much struck and surprised to see a stranger standing there whom I had never seen before, and to hear roars of laughter coming out of the shop and drawing the children about the door. The stranger was one of the fattest men I ever saw: not that he was dreadfully big or unwieldy,--on the contrary, he was spinning about on his toes in a way that would have been a trial to the lightest Englishman. His fatness was so beautifully distributed that it was amazing to see. His arms in the coat-sleeves which fitted them like the covers of a cushion, his short plump fingers, all were in perfect keeping. As for his face, that was nearly lost in beard. When I entered the shop he had seized his beard with one of his fat hands, in the warmth of his monologue; for he was talking, I have no doubt, in a very animated and lively manner, if any one could have understood a word of what he said. Now, I confess I felt a good deal of sympathy with the poor fellow; for I remember quite well the only time I ever was abroad feeling an odd sort of conviction that if I only spoke very clear, plain, distinct English, and spoke loud enough, people, after a while, must come to understand me. When he saw me he made a spin clean out of my way, took off the queer hat he had on, made me a bow, and stopped talking till I had done my business; which was the most civil thing I had seen in a stranger for many a day. And the face was such a jolly, honest sort of face that, in spite of my prejudice against foreigners, I felt quite disarmed all at once. “Who is he? What is he saying?” said I to the shop-people. “Goodness knows!” cried old Mrs. Taylor, the shopkeeper’s mother. “I know no more on’t nor if it was a dog. Lord, Miss Milly! to think of poor creatures brought up from their cradles to talk sich stuff as that!” “I was brought up at a grammar-school, ma’am,” said young Taylor himself, with a blush; “where it isn’t modern languages, you know, ma’am, that’s the great thing; and, though I know the grammar, I’m not very well up in my French.” Here his little sister, who had kept nudging him all this time, suddenly whispered, with her face growing crimson, “Oh, Alfred! ask Miss Milly!--to be sure she knows.”