He was in and out of my room no less than fifteen times, rigged out in some sort of blanket dress, fastened with a rope amidships. He wore that over his nightgown, and a shawl like an old woman's on top of the blanket. His head was tied up in a silk handkerchief; and his feet was shoved into slippers that flapped up and down when he walked and sounded like a slack jib in a light breeze. First off he couldn't sleep 'cause the frogs hollered. Next, 'twas the surf that troubled him. Then the window blinds creaked. And, at last, I'm blessed if he didn't come flappin' and rustlin' in at half-past one to ask what made it so quiet. I was desp'rate, and I told him I was subject to nightmare, and had been known to cripple folks that come in and woke me sudden that way. He cleared out and I heard him pilin' chairs and furniture against his door on the inside. After that I managed to sleep till six o'clock. Then he knocked and asked if I was thoroughly awake, 'cause if I was would I tell him what sort of weather 'twas likely to be, so's he could dress accordin'. His risin' hour was nine,—more principle, of course,—but he liked to know what to wear when he did get up.
And he was just as bad all that day and the next. I'd have quit and had the doctor take me back to the Poquit House, but I didn't like to on Lot's account. Poor Lot was all upset and needed some sane person to turn to for comfort. And besides, although he made me mad, I got consider'ble fun out of this Lemuel man's doin's. He was such a specimen that I liked to study him, same as he used to study a new species of insect, when he had that particular craze.
He seemed to like me, too, in a way. Anyhow he used to come in and talk to me pretty frequent. He had three words that he used all the time—"awful" and "dreadful" and "horrible." Everything in the neighborhood fitted to them words, 'cordin' to his notion. And he had one question that he kept askin' over and over: What should he do? What was there to do in the dreadful place?
"Why don't you keep on collectin'?" I asked him. "We're kind of scurce on postage stamps, and the handwritin' supply is limited; though you never collected anything like Lot's signature, I'll bet a cooky. But there's bugs enough, land knows! Why don't you go bug-huntin'?"
Oh, he was tired of insects. Never wanted to see one again!
"Then you'll have to wear blinders when you go past the salt-marsh," says I. "The moskeeters are so thick there they get in your eyes. Why not take a swim?"
Horrible! he loathed salt-water. He never bathed in it, as a matter of—
I interrupted quick—"Then take a walk," says I.
Walking was a "bore."
"Well then," I says, "just do what the doctor ordered—set and rest."