The Imp and the Author
slower than usual. It was farther to the pool than he had thought, moreover, and the slab of hard ginger cake that had stood him for his morning lunch had not been large. But he kept doggedly on his way, and came at last to the welcome shadow of the big rock.
A heavy frown drew his brows together. There, right in the coolest part of the shadow, lay a large middle-aged man, fast asleep. O Solitude! thou art like thy sister Sleep, elusive, and not to be had for the mere asking! Right near his pool the man lay, and as the Imp cautiously stole up to him and examined him, he remembered having seen him before—he ate at the hotel, in fact. This was the man the ladies talked about so much and were so polite to. They brought him books and asked him to write his name in them, and they took snap-shots of him in his bathing-suit, which was said to have deeply displeased him. They strolled frequently about his little cottage, and one tall thin lady with glasses used to put heliotrope at his place at breakfast till he complained to the manager.
The Imp had heard him complain; he said, "Hang it all, Simmons, it gives me hay-fever,
54
