I “caught it” for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her coffee, when it was a “good deal better than we get at home.”  I “caught it” for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that Ms. when the printers are done with it.  I “caught it” once more for personating that drunken Colonel James.  I “caught it” for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow’s picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we hadn’t any frames, and that if you wouldn’t mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, etc., etc., etc., the madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute.  Then she said: 

    “How could you, Youth!  The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
    sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er—­”

    “Oh, Howells won’t mind it!  You don’t know Howells.  Howells is a
    man who—­”

    She was gone.  But George was the first person she stumbled on in
    the hall, so she took it out of George.  I am glad of that, because
    it saved the babies.

Clemens used to admit, at a later day, that his education did not advance by leaps and bounds, but gradually, very gradually; and it used to give him a pathetic relief in those after-years, when that sweet presence had gone out of his life, to tell the way of it, to confess over-fully, perhaps, what a responsibility he had been to her.

He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity from her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut between their bedroom and the bathroom, he was in there dressing and shaving, accompanying these trying things with language intended only for the strictest privacy; how presently, when he discovered a button off the shirt he intended to put on, he hurled it through the window into the yard with appropriate remarks, followed it with another shirt that was in the same condition, and added certain collars and neckties and bath-room requisites, decorating the shrubbery outside, where the people were going by to church; how in this extreme moment he heard a slight cough and turned to find that the door was open!  There was only one door to the bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her.  He felt pale and sick, and sat down for a few moments to consider.  He decided to assume that she was asleep, and to walk out and through the room, head up, as if he had nothing on his conscience.  He attempted it, but without success.  Half-way across the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last terrific remark.  He turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him with a look as withering as she could find in her gentle soul.  The humor of it struck him.

“Livy,” he said, “did it sound like that?”

“Of course it did,” she said, “only worse.  I wanted you to hear just how it sounded.”