he speech that I would make if it were possible. As it is, I
can only rehearse it to myself.

Indeed, the more I analyse it the more impossible it seems, for a man of
my temperament at any rate, to be a summer guest. These people, and,
I imagine, all other summer people, seem to be trying to live in a
perpetual joke. Everything, all day, has to be taken in a mood of
uproarious fun.

However, I can speak of it all now in quiet retrospect and without
bitterness. It will soon be over now. Indeed, the reason why I have come
down at this early hour to this quiet water is that things have reached
a crisis. The situation has become extreme and I must end it.

It happened last night. Beverly-Jones took me aside while the others
were dancing the fox-trot to the victrola on the piazza.

"We're planning to have some rather good fun to-morrow night," he said,
"something that will be a good deal more in your line than a lot of it,
I'm afraid, has been up here. In fact, my wife says that this will be
the very thing for you."

"Oh," I said.

"We're going to get all the people from the other houses over and
the girls"--this term Beverly-Jones uses to mean his wife and her
friends--"are going to get up a sort of entertainment with charades and
things, all impromptu, more or less, of course--"

"Oh," I said. I saw already what was coming.

"And they want you to act as a sort of master-of-ceremonies, to make up
the gags and introduce the different stunts and all that. I was telling
the girls about that afternoon at the club, when you were simply killing
us all with those funny stories of yours, and they're all wild over it."

"Wild?" I repeated.

"Yes, quite wild over it. They say it will be the hit of the summer."

Beverly-Jones shook hands with great warmth as we parted for the
night. I knew that he was thinking that my character was about to be
triumphantly vindicated, and that he was glad for my sake.

Last night I did not sleep. I remained awake all night thinking of the
"entertainment." In my whole life I have done nothing in public except
once when I presented a walking-stick to the vice-president of our club
on the occasion of his taking a trip to Europe. Even for that I used
to rehearse to myself far into the night sentences that began: "This
walking-stick, gentleman, means far more than a mere walking-stick."

And now they expect me to come out as a merry master-of-ceremonies
before an assembled crowd of summer gu