The Imp and the Author
you know. I can't bear the damned stuff! Can't you choke it off?"
The Imp had repeated this speech to his father and his Uncle Stanley, who came down for Sunday, and they had roared with laughter. The Imp had never heard of hay-fever, and he was impressed with the idea that the heliotrope possessed the man with a mad longing for hay—to eat, presumably. A few cautious and vague inquiries along this line had elicited the statement that the only person who was known to have thus regaled himself was Nebuchadnezzar, the King of the Jews. The Imp's one idea of this historical personage was derived from a friend in the city, who sang a song about him to the effect that he jumped out of his stockings and into his shoes. This seemed an odd and on the whole meaningless feat, and the Imp unconsciously transferred a justly merited contempt for the frivolous monarch to his representative at the cottage.
Though a prominent man he was far from popular at the shore, for he spoke seldom and gruffly, and was held to be haughty and reserved. Once he had been asked to give a reading for the benefit of the hotel servants, but he had un-
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