n
fact, I do not agree with you: it was hotter in the early part of
July, year before last, than it has been at any time this summer.
Several degrees hotter--several degrees."

"I fear I must beg to differ with you," he said, catching the poor
lady again, a moment later. "I beg to differ decidedly. Other
places get a great deal more heat. Look at Egypt."

"Permit me to disagree," he interrupted her at once, when she
pathetically squirmed to another subject. "There's more than one
side to this matter. You are looking at this matter from a totally
wrong angle. . . . Let me inform you that statistics. . . ." Mrs.
Madison's gentle voice was no more than just audible in the short
intervals he permitted; a blind listener would have thought Mr.
Trumble at the telephone. Hedrick was thankful when his mother
finally gave up altogether the display of her ignorance,
inaccuracy, and general misinformation, and Trumble talked alone.
That must have been the young man's object; certainly he had
struggled for it; and so it must have pleased him. He talked on
and on and on; he passed from one topic to another with no pause;
swinging over the gaps with a "Now you take," or, "And that
reminds me," filling many a vacancy with "So-and-so and
so-and-so," and other stencils, while casting about for material
to continue. Everything was italicized, the significant and the
trivial, to the same monotone of emphasis. Death and shoe-laces
were all the same to him.

Anything was all the same to him so long as he talked.

Hedrick's irritation was gradually dispelled; and, becoming used
to the sound, he found it lulling; relaxed his attitude and
drowsed; Mr. Lindley was obviously lost in a reverie; Mrs.
Madison, her hand shading her eyes, went over her market-list for
the morrow and otherwise set her house in order; Laura alone sat
straight in her chair; and her face was toward the vocalist, but
as she was in deep shadow her expression could not be guessed.
However, one person in that group must have listened with genuine
pleasure--else why did he talk?

It was the returned native whose departure at last rang the
curtain on the monologue. The end of the long sheltered seclusion
of Cora and her companion was a whispered word. He spoke it first:

"To-morrow?"

"To-morrow."

Cora gave a keen, quick, indrawn sigh--not of sorrow--and sank
back in her chair, as he touched her hand in farewell and rose to
go. She remained where she was, motionle