slightly tinged with sensuality. But how long, may I ask, have you
taken to breakfasting on spiders?"--pointing, as he took a chair
opposite the Major, at an immense red-spotted one that had dropt from
the ceiling on the morsel my grandfather was in the act of conveying
to his mouth.

The Major tenderly removed the insect by a leg.

"'Tis the worst of these al-fresco meals, Frank," said he. "Yesterday
I cut a green lizard in two that had got on my plate, mistaking him
for a bit of salad--being, as usual, more intent on my book than my
food--and had very near swallowed the tail-half of the unfortunate
animal."

"There are worse things than lizards in the world," quoth Garry.
"Ants, I should say, were certainly less wholesome"--and he directed
the Major's attention to a long black line of those interesting
creatures issuing from a hole in the pavement, passing in an unbroken
series up my ancestor's left leg, the foot of which rested on the
ground, then traversing the cloth, and terminating at the loaf, the
object of their expedition.

"Bless me," said the Major, as he rose and shook his breeches gently
free from the marauders, "I must be more careful, or I shall chance to
do myself a mischief. But they're worse at night. I've been obliged to
leave off reading here in the evenings, for it went to my heart to see
the moths scorching their pretty gauzy wings in the candle till the
wicks were half-choked with them."

"Do you know, Major," said Owen, gravely, "that either this insect
diet, or the sedentary life you lead, is making you quite fat, and
utterly destroying the symmetry of your figure? In another week there
will be one unbroken line of rotundity from your chin to your knees."

My grandfather glanced downward at his waistcoat. "No, my boy, no,"
said he; "if there had been any difference, I should have known it by
my clothes. I don't think I've gained a pound this twelvemonth."

"More than a stone," quoth Garry. "We all remarked it on parade
to-day--and remarked it with sorrow. Now, look you, a sea voyage is
the very thing to restore your true proportions, and I propose that we
shall take a short one together."

"A sea voyage!" quoth my grandfather; "the boy is mad! Not if all the
wonders seen by Sinbad the Sailor lay within a day's sail. Did I not
suffer enough coming here from England? I don't think," said my
grandfather with considerable pathos, "that my digestion has ever been
quite right to this day."