The time was early summer, and therefore the summer dining-room of the Spatts was in use.  This dining-room consisted of one white, windowed wall, a tiled floor, and a roof of wood.  The windows gave into the winter dining-room, which was a white apartment, sparsely curtained and cushioned with chintz, and containing very few pieces of furniture or pictures.  The Spatts considered, rightly, that furniture and pictures were unhygienic and the secret lairs of noxious germs.  Had the Spatts flourished twenty-five years earlier their dining-room would have been covered with brown paper upon which would have hung permanent photographs of European masterpieces of graphic art, and there would have been a multiplicity of draperies and specimens of battered antique furniture, with a warming-pan or so suspended here and there in place of sporting trophies.  But the Spatts had not begun to flourish twenty-five years ago.  They flourished very few years ago and they still flourish.

As the summer dining-room had only one wall, it follows that it was open to the powers of the air.  This result had been foreseen by the Spatts—­had indeed been expressly arranged, for they believed strongly in the powers of the air, as being beneficent powers.  It is true that they generally had sniffling colds, but their argument was that these maladies had no connection whatever with the powers of the air, which, according to their theory, saved them from much worse.

They and their guests were now seated at dinner.  Twilight was almost lost in night.  The table was illuminated by four candles at the corners, and flames of these candles flickered in the healthful evening breeze, dropping pink wax on the candlesticks.  They were surrounded by the mortal remains of tiny moths, but other tiny moths would not heed the warning and continually shot themselves into the flames.  On the outskirts of the table moved with silent stealth the forms of two middle-aged and ugly servants.

Mrs. Spatt was very tall and very thin, and the simplicity of her pale green dress—­sole reminder of the brown-paper past—­was calculated to draw attention to these attributes.  She had an important reddish nose, and a mysterious look of secret confidence, which never left her even in the most trying crises.  Mr. Spatt also was very tall and very thin.  His head was several sizes too small, and part of his insignificant face, which one was apt to miss altogether in contemplating his body, was hidden under a short grey beard.  Siegfried Spatt, the sole child of the union, though but seventeen, was as tall and as thin as his father and his mother; he had a pale face and red hands.