246 AN OWL'S gesn HOLIDAY. 
look round the corner of the house at Owl’s 
Head itself, at whose base we were. ‘The hotel 
had less than a dozen guests and no piano, and 
there was neither carriage-road nor railway 
within sight or hearing. Yes, this was the 
place where I would spend the eight days 
which yet remained to me of idle time. 
Of the eight days five were what are called 
unpleasant ; but the unseasonable cold, which 
drove the stayers in the house to huddle about 
the fire, struck the mosquitoes with a torpor 
which made strolling in the woods a double 
luxury ; while the rain was chiefly of the show- 
ery sort, such as a rubber coat and old clothes 
render comparatively harmless. Not that I 
failed to take a hand with my associates in 
grumbling about the weather. Table-talk 
would speedily come to an end in such circum- 
stances if people were forbidden to criticise the 
order of nature; and it is not for me to boast 
any peculiar sanctity in this respect. But when 
all was over, it had to be acknowledged that I, 
for one, had been kept in-doors very little. In 
fact, if the whole truth were told, it would 
probably appear that my fellow boarders, see- 
ing my persistency in disregarding the inclem- 
ency of the elements, soon came to look upon 
me as decidedly odd, though perhaps not abso- 
lutely demented. At any rate, I was rather 
