IT was a hot, clear moonlit night.
Our newly arrived guests, after an evening given up to piano music and song, had retired to their various cubby holes.
But peace did not lie upon the house, for it was the hottest night of the season and mosquitoes—hitherto an undreaded foe, attracted by the unwonted light and the music, had descended upon us and as, of course, screens were not dreamed of in a place where the mosquito rivals the tramp in scarceness, they had entered the house and were singing their infernal songs in the ears of people fresh from a mosquitoless city.
I was mortified. It seemed a breach of hospitality to invite people up to a place where every prospect pleases and man is not so vile, and then to let loose a horde of mosquitoes upon them.
It was between three and four in the morning, and soon the first signs of dawn would be upon us.
I was trying to be comfortable in a hammock slung under the boughs of the maple, and Ellery was trying to be comfortable in another hammock slung under other boughs, but neither of us was making a success of it, although he was fitfully sleeping. There is something unmistakably enticing in the thought of depending, cool and free from a leafy arbour while the summer moon watches over one’s slumbers, and the lulling breezes croon one to unconsciousness, but loyal as I am to Clover Lodge and its vicinity, I am more loyal to truth, and that night was a night to be remembered for years even as the blizzard is remembered—but for opposite reasons.
The air was still, but the mosquitoes were not and neither were my guests. I could hear them stirring and slapping and I feared that some of them were cursing, and I longed for dawn with all my heart. Dawn and the hot day that would follow in its wake, for at least we could escape to some lofty point, where the mosquitoes would not follow us.
I knew that Tom and Benedict were used to all sorts of experiences, and I knew their wives too well to think for a moment that they would hold me responsible for the night and the winged pests, but Hepburn—
Hepburn had been raised in the lap of luxury, and when I thought of his tall form accommodating itself to the ornate but contracted sofa, I felt so uncomfortable that I thought of going in and asking him to swap couches with me—and change discomfort.
I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by hearing a step on the gravelled path.