Our Adventures at "Simplicity Hall."
By Mrs. Fred Maturin.
An amusing narrative, setting forth the trials and tribulations of a party of Rand residents who essayed to found a "Simple Life" colony out on the South African veldt. From the first everything seemed to go wrong, and life became in consequence rather more complicated than usual. "I have suppressed the actual names of the persons concerned," writes the authoress, "but the facts are quite correct."
III.
February 18th.—A week has passed away fairly peacefully, and now the last fresh trouble is that we have got to fumigate this house with a very dangerous mixture of vitriol and prussic acid to kill various non-paying guests, such as mice, mosquitoes, etc.—the etceteras being the worst of them all.
Six-and-eightpence had to sleep in the cottage two nights because he had such a very bad cold, and in the morning, when we asked him was it nice sleeping in a room again, he replied, with his usual courtesy, "I should have slept excellently but for the moss—quitoes." Six-and-eightpence is very prim and precise. He never says "mosquitoes" like other people, but always "moss—quitoes," the "quitoes" coming some time after the "moss." Every morning after that he appeared at breakfast with some polite remark about the "moss—quitoes."
"Would a net be any use?" I asked; "for you can have mine." But Six-and-eightpence says that nets would be no use for the special kind of wingless "moss—quito" that apparently infests this cottage at night.