CHAPTER X
MARRIAGE AND WIDOWHOOD.
“I heard the ‘Click, click’ of the hot-weather bird to-day,” observed Robin; “the warm season will burst on us soon.”
“Soon indeed!” exclaimed Alicia, fanning herself as she spoke. “You need not speak of the future; have we not grilling days already? Are you not all driven into this little room because the morning sun makes the veranda like a furnace?—O Harold, surely the heat without and the fires within have made our bungalow habitable now!”
“Scarcely yet, my love,” was Harold’s reply.
Alicia would have laughed at petty discomforts in cooler weather; but with the thermometer making a sudden rise to ninety, with no intention of resting at that point, and with a host of flies and musquitoes coming out to enjoy the warmth, she felt her power of endurance rather severely tried.
“Oh, these hateful musquitoes!” exclaimed the young wife, trying, but with indifferent success, to ward off their attacks with her fan.
“I prefer the musquito to the fly,” observed Robin, whose face showed numerous signs that the former had not left him in peace. “The vulgar fly comes buzzing about you with apparently no definite object, settles on your pen and drinks the ink, and then makes a dash at your eye. The musquito is a more chivalrous foe: he blows his trumpet as a challenge, and defies you to single combat. He is vigilant and active; so must you be if you wish to bring him down with a blow. You see my hand is now resting perfectly still on my knee: this is a ruse to invite an attack. The enemy sees it, and—there!” A sharp slap on that hand given by the right one resounded through the room; but the musquito had been too quick even for Robin, and soared aloft unhurt, blowing its horn in triumph. “I’ll have him yet,” said Robin gaily.
“You make a joke of everything,” remarked Alicia.
“It is better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles,” was Robin’s cheerful reply. “We missionaries should not want to roll along life’s road in an easy carriage, bolstered up, and enclosed in a musquito-net.”