Perfect strangers to me were these young ladies; but, like most confirmed bachelors, I rather like being with the adorable sex, when I find myself translated as if by magic.
We were formed of the dust of the earth—there was no denying the fact, and we speedily withdrew; but before our dinner toilets were completed, such a collection of appetizers was sent in to us as must distinguish forever the charming hostess who concocted them. I need not recall the dinner. Have you ever observed that there is no real pleasure in reviving the memory of something good to eat? Suffice it to state that the dinner was such a one as was most likely to be laid for us under the special supervision of three blooming maidens, who had come hither four and twenty hours in advance of us for this special purpose. That night we played for moderate stakes until the hours were too small to be mentioned. I forget who won; but it was probably the girls, who were as clever at cards as they were at everything else. We ultimately retired, for the angel of sleep visits even a Californian bungalow, though his hours are a trifle irregular. Our rooms, two large chambers, with folding doors thrown back, making the two as one, contained four double beds; in one of the rooms was a small altar, upon which stood a statue of the Madonna, veiled in ample folds of lace and crowned with a coronet of natural flowers; vases of flowers were at her feet, and lighted tapers flickered on either hand. The apartment occupied by the young ladies was at the other corner of the bungalow; the servants, a good old couple, retainers in Alf's family, slept in a cottage adjoining. We retired manfully; we had smoked our last smoke, and were not a little fatigued; hence this readiness on our part to lay down the burdens and cares of the day. When the lights were extinguished the moon, streaming in at the seaward windows, flooded the long rooms. It was a glorious night; no sound disturbed its exquisite serenity save the subdued murmur of the waves, softened by an intervening hillock on which the cypress trees stood like black and solemn sentinels of the night.
"The Huge Court of that Luxurious Caravansary."
I think I must have dozed, for it first seemed like a dream—the crouching figures that stole in Indian file along the carpet from bed to bed; but soon enough I wakened to a reality, for the Phillistines were upon us, and the pillows fell like aerolites out of space. The air was dense with flying bed-clothes; the assailants, Bartholomew and Alf, his right-hand man, fell upon us with school-boy fury; they made mad leaps, and landed upon our stomachs. We grappled in deadly combat; not an article of furniture was left unturned; not one mattress remained upon another. We made night hideous for some moments. We roused the ladies from their virgin sleep, but paid little heed to their piteous pleadings. The treaty of peace, which followed none too soon—the pillow-cases were like fringes and the sheets were linen shreds—culminated in a round of night-caps which for potency and flavor have, perhaps, never been equalled in the history of the vine.
Then we did sleep—the sleep of the just, who have earned their right to it; the sleep of the horny-handed son of the soil, whose muscles relax with a jerk that awakens the sleeper to a realizing sense that he has been sleeping and is going to sleep again at his earliest convenience: the sweet, intense, and gracious sleep of innocence—out of which we were awakened just before breakfast time by the most considerate of hostesses and her ladies of honor, who sent into us the reviving cup, without which, I fear, we could not have begun the new day in a spirit appropriate to the occasion.
The first day at the bungalow was Friday and, of course, a fast day; we observed the rule with a willingness which, I trust, the recording angel made a note of. There was a bath at the beach toward mid-day, followed by a cold collation in the shelter of a rude chalet, which served the ladies in the absence of the customary bathing-machine. Lying upon rugs spread over the sand we chatted until a drowsy mood persuaded us to return to the bungalow and indulge in a siesta. It being summer, and a California summer by the sea, a huge log fire blazed upon the evening hearth; cards and the jingle of golden counters again kept us at the table till the night was far spent. Need I add that the ladies presented a petition with the customary night-cap, praying that the gentlemen in the double-chamber would omit the midnight gymnastics upon retiring, and go to sleep like "good boys." It had been our intention to do so; we were not wholly restored, for the festivities of the night previous had been prolonged and fatiguing.
We began our preparations by wheeling the four bedsteads into one room. It seemed to us cosier to be sleeping thus together; indeed, it was quite a distance from the extremity of one room to the extremity of the other. Resigning ourselves to the pillows, each desired his neighbor to extinguish the lights; no one moved to perform this necessary duty. We slept, or pretended to sleep, and for some moments the bungalow was quiet as the grave. In the midst of this refreshing silence a panic seized us; with one accord we sprang to arms; the pillows, stripped of their cases on the night previous, again darkened the air. We leaped gaily from bed to bed, and in turn, took every corner of the room by storm; the shout of victory mingled with the cry for mercy. There was one solitary voice for peace; it was the voice of the vexed hostess, and it was followed by the suspension of hostilities and the instant quenching of the four tapers, each blown by an individual mouth, after which we groped back to our several couches in a state of charming uncertainty as to which was which.
Saturday followed, and, of all Saturdays in the year, it chanced to be the vigil of a feast, and therefore a day of abstinence. The ladies held the key of the larder, and held it, permit me to add, with a clenched hand. It may be that all boys are not like our boys; that there are those who, having ceased to elongate and increase in the extremities out of all proportion, are willing to fast from day to day; who no longer lust after the flesh-pots, and whose appetites are governable—but ours were not. The accustomed fish of a Friday was welcome, but Saturday was out of the question. "Something too much of this," said Croesus the Sybarite. "Amen!" cried the affable Alf. There was an unwonted fire in the eye of Bartholomew when he asked for a dispensation at the hands of the hostess, and was refused.