My grandfather proceeded slowly with his meal, holding the cup to his lips with one hand and turning a leaf with the other--an operation which he was delaying till a great mosquito-hawk (a beautiful brown moth mottled like a pheasant), that had settled on the page, should think proper to take flight. He had lately come from a parade, as was evidenced by his regimental leather breeches and laced red waistcoat; but a chintz dressing-gown and a pair of yellow Moorish slippers softened down the warlike tone of these garments to one more congenial with his peaceable and festive pursuits. Presently the garden door opened, and a well-known step ascended to the verandah. Frank Owen, dressed in a cool Spanish costume, advanced, and, stopping three paces from the Major, took off his tufted sombrero and made a low bow.
"You are the picture, my dear sir," he said, "of serene enjoyment 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."