ities, the thermometer had climbed and
climbed. Pavements were blistering hot; watering carts went
lumbering round only to send up a reek of noisome mist and to leave
the streets whitening again a few yards behind them. Blinds were
closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left
their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom
in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels
and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as
if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat.
Down in the poor, crowded places, where the gutters fumed with
filth, and doors stood open upon horrible passages and staircases,
little children, barefooted, with one miserable garment on, sat on
grimy stone steps, or played wretchedly about the sidewalks,
impeding the passers of a better class who hastened with bated
breath, amidst the fever-breeding nuisances, along to railway
stations whence they would escape to country and sea-side homes.

On the wharves was the smell of tarred seams and
cordage,--sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks
could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from
falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the
faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men
surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass,
regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered
off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their
fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through
wailed the helpless, pitiful cry of a slowly murdered infancy; and
out on the blazing thoroughfares where business had to be busy,
strong men were dropping down, and reporters were hovering about
upon the skirts of little crowds, gathering their items; making
_their_ hay while this terrible sun was shining.

What did Mrs. Argenter care?

The sun would be going down now, in a little while; then the cool
piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,--yellow
Alderney milk,--would be delightful. Once or twice she did think of
"Argie" in New York,--gone thither on some perplexing, hurried
errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of
which she had only half heard,--and remembered that the heat must be
"awful" there. But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound
steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, she would
surely speak