bed-pests

Updated: June 13, 2025

Dorcas, however, stuck to her point, and enforced it by a domestic example, adding that the creatures which in polite society are called "bed-pests," that haunted the straw of the huts, tormented her while Tabitha never had so much as a single bite. The end of it was that the matter of mission-house versus huts was referred to the Bishop for his opinion.

Henry Rider Haggard - Smith and the Pharaohs, and other Tales