“What’s the matter?” said I.

“Matther is it?  Murther’s the matther,” and he gave another vicious stamp, and then took a stride that nearly cost him his balance, and gave another.  “I beg yor pardon, sorr; but it’s the cockroaches.  The place swarms wid ’em.  Av they’d keep peaceably below, now, but invading the master’s bedroom—­that’s for ye, ye thief!” and he stamped again.

“The creatures here are a great plague,” said I, slapping a mosquito upon my forehead.

“And that as true a word as your honour ever spoke.  They’re murderous no less!  Many’s the time I’m wishing myself back in old Ireland, where there’s no venomous beasts at all, at all.  Arrah!  Would ye, ye skulking—­”

I left him stamping and streaming with perspiration, but labouring loyally on in a temperature where labour was little short of heroism.

I went back to my chair, and began to think over my prospects.  It is a disadvantage of idleness that one wearies oneself with thinking, though one cannot act.  I wondered how the prosperous sugar-planter was receiving Dennis, and whether he would do more for him than one’s rich relations are apt to do.  The stars began to pale in the dawn without my being any the wiser for my speculations, and then my friends came home.  The young officer was full of hopes that I had been comfortable, and Dennis of regrets that I had not gone with them.  His hair was tossed, his cheeks were crimson, and he had lost the flower from his buttonhole.

“How did you get on with your cousin?” I asked.  The reply confounded me.

“Oh, charmingly!  Dances like a fairy.  I say, Willie, as a mere matter of natural history, d’ye believe any other human being ever had such feet?”

A vague wonder crept into my brain whether the cousin could possibly have become half a nigger, from the climate, which really felt capable of anything, and have developed feet like our friend the pilot; but I was diverted from this speculation by seeing that Dennis was clapping his pockets and hunting for something.

“What have you lost now?” asked his friend.

“My pocket-handkerchief.  Ah, there it is!” and he drew it from within his waistcoat, and with it came his gloves, and a third one, and they fell on the floor.  As he picked the odd one up the lieutenant laughed.

“What size does she wear, Dennis—­sixes?”

“Five and three-quarters—­long fingers; so she tells me.”  He sighed, and then wandered to the window, whistling “Robin Adair.”

“Now, Dennis, you promised me to go straight to bed.  Turn in we must, for I have to be on an early parade.”

“All right, Willie.  Good-night, and a thousand thanks to you.  It’s been a great evening—­I never was so happy in my life.  Come along, Jack.”

And off he went, tossing his head and singing to the air he had been whistling,

“Who in the song so sweet? 
Eileen aroon! 
Who in the dance so fleet? 
Eileen aroon! 
Dear were her charms to me,
Dearer her laughter free,
Dearest her constancy,
Eileen aroon!”