With that Ned conducted his guests to a pretty little bath-house which stood out over the water, and was approached by a green bridge. Bluffton abounds in these well-appointed, private bathing-houses, which, with their ornamental approaches, add not a little to the beauty of the singular town, which is scarcely a town at all in the ordinary sense of the word, as Ned explained to his companions while they were dressing after their bath.
"This coast country," he said, "is plagued with country fever."
"What's country fever?" asked Jack Farnsworth.
"It's a very severe and fatal form of bilious fever, which one night's exposure—or even a few hours' exposure after sunset—brings on."
"Then why did you bring us here?" asked Charley. "Are we to find ourselves down with country fever to-morrow morning?"
"No, not at all," replied Ned. "Country fever stays strictly at home. It never goes to town; it never visits high ground where there are pines, white sand, and no moss; and it never comes to Bluffton. That's why there is any Bluffton. All along the coast the planters have their winter residences on their plantations, but in the summer they go off to little summer villages in the pines to escape the fever. In the region just around us, it is so much easier and pleasanter to live here in Bluffton that they build permanent residences here and live here all the year around. There is no trade here, no shops—except a blacksmith shop out on the road—no stores, no any thing except private houses, and the private houses are all built pretty nearly alike. Each stands alone in a large plot of ground, which is filled with trees and shrubs just as all the streets are. Each house has a piazza running all the way around it, or pretty nearly that, and each has two or three joggling boards."
"What in the world is a joggling board?" asked Charley.
"I'll introduce you when we get back to the house," said Ned.
When the boys returned to the house, Ned's prediction was abundantly fulfilled. Maum Sally had spread a tempting, if somewhat incongruous supper in the piazza. There was a piece of cold ham, some fried fresh fish, a dish of shrimps stewed with tomatoes, a great platter of rice cooked in the South Carolinian way, and intended for use in lieu of bread, some boiled okra, roast sweet potatoes, and a pot of steaming coffee. It was a miscellaneous sort of meal, compounded of breakfast, dinner, and supper in about equal proportions, but it was such a meal as three healthy boys, who had walked eighteen miles and had then taken a sea bath, were not in the least disposed to quarrel with.
"Now, Maum Sally," said Ned, after he had complimented the supper and taken his seat at the table, "tell me where Uncle Edward and Aunt Helen are, and when they will get back?"