The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. […] The bed was the most extravagant piece. Its graceful cane half tester rose high towards the cornice and was so festooned in carved white wood that the effect was positively insecure, as if the great couch were trimmed with icing sugar.

Meanwhile if chance some desp'rate patient die / […] / Whether ill-tendment, or recureless pain, / Procure his death […]

Of this, however, I was not aware; although, in the present instance, I saw clearly that something of a whimsical nature was upon the tapis with my friend, and that Hermann was its especial object.

“It sticks in my mind that he would take it very ill,” says Alan. “But the little man cried to me to run, and indeed I thought it was a good observe, and ran. The last that I saw they were all in a knot upon the beach, like folk that were not agreeing very well together.”