noticed her stretched
arm, bare to the elbow, and the other arm balancing, the tilted body
helping also to maintain equilibrium. Almost more than she could
manage--why didn't that broad-backed thick-legged lump of a dairy-maid
carry the house-pail? He would have liked to go out and carry the pail
himself; but that was one of the many things which he must carefully
refrain from doing.

And all day long, though he saw her so often, he never once heard her
sing. She made no song over her work, as used to be her habit. He
wondered if Mavis was not working her too hard in this terribly
exhausting weather. He wondered also if he would ever be able to say
quite naturally what he had for so long wished to say and felt he
ought to say--that Norah must be given a holiday, that she must be
sent somewhere at a considerable distance and stay there in charge of
kind and respectable people for an indefinite period. Mavis might
consider the suggestion so strange; and it might be impossible to
explain that, strange as it seemed, it was nevertheless full of
wisdom--a suggestion that should be acted upon without an instant's
delay.

The supper table had been brought out into the open air, and it stood
upon the flagged path, where they had spread their hospitable feast
for the higgler's wedding. Norah was coming in and out of the kitchen,
and Dale sat watching her as she arranged knives, forks, and glasses.
Both the children were to be of the party; and they might stay up as
late as they pleased, because as it was too hot to sleep in their
beds, it did not matter how long the young people remained out of
them. They were now roaming about the orchard with Mavis, hunting for
a coolness that did not exist anywhere except in one's memory, and
their voices sounded at intervals languidly.

More and more color was now perceptible; distances were extending;
lines of meager flowers, crimson and blue as well as white, showed in
a border of the kitchen garden; and the sky, seeming to lift and
brighten, was a faint orange above the horizon and a most delicate
rose tint toward the zenith--so that till half-past eight, or later,
one had the illusion that the night was going to be more brightly
lighted than the day.

Nobody had much appetite for supper, but they all sat a long while at
the table, glad to rest if they could not eat, hoping that when they
moved from their chairs they would find the temperature lower within
the house walls than outsi