o lie unclad upon their beds; while
in hospitals the patients murmured querulously against the heat, and
perhaps against some noisy motorist who strove to feel the air by
splitting it, not troubled by any foreboding that he, too, that hour
next week, might need quiet near a hospital. The "hot spell" was a
true spell, one upon men's spirits; for it was so hot that, in suburban
outskirts, golfers crept slowly back over the low undulations of their
club lands, abandoning their matches and returning to shelter.

Even on such a day, sizzling work had to be done, as in winter. There
were glowing furnaces to be stoked, liquid metals to be poured; but such
tasks found seasoned men standing to them; and in all the city probably
no brave soul challenged the heat more gamely than Mrs. Adams did, when,
in a corner of her small and fiery kitchen, where all day long her
hired African immune cooked fiercely, she pressed her husband's evening
clothes with a hot iron. No doubt she risked her life, but she risked
it cheerfully in so good and necessary a service for him. She would have
given her life for him at any time, and both his and her own for her
children.

Unconscious of her own heroism, she was surprised to find herself rather
faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took heart to believe
that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places;
and she carried them upstairs to her husband's room before increasing
blindness forced her to grope for the nearest chair. Then, trying to
rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit
down again; but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet;
and, keeping her hand against the wall, moved successfully to the door
of her own room. Here she wavered; might have gone down, had she not
been stimulated by the thought of how much depended upon her;--she made
a final great effort, and floundered across the room to her bureau,
where she kept some simple restoratives. They served her need, or her
faith in them did; and she returned to her work.

She went down the stairs, keeping a still tremulous hand upon the rail;
but she smiled brightly when Alice looked up from below, where the
woodwork was again being tormented with superfluous attentions.

"Alice, DON'T!" her mother said, commiseratingly. "You did all that this
morning and it looks lovely. What's the use of wearing yourself out on
it? You ought to be lying down, so's to look fresh