My laugh compelled Mrs.
Poppleton to stare at me--oh, her eyes I Thereupon, her husband began his dread performance.

The patience, the heroic patience, of that dear, good fellow! I have known him explain, and re-explain, for a quarter of an hour, and invariably without success.

It might be a mere pun; Mrs.
Poppleton no more understood the nature of a pun than of the binomial theorem.

But worse was when the jest involved some allusion.

When I heard Poppleton begin to elucidate, to expound, the perspiration already on his forehead, I looked at him with imploring anguish.