The day had advanced to a heat unusual in our temperate climate. All nature seemed to be holding its breath in an endeavour to support it. There was no sound of bird life, and even the insects had ceased their stir of activity. After one set, somewhat languidly pursued, the tennis players betook themselves to the seats disposed near at hand, in a shade almost as torrid as the sun-steeped open. Judith was the only member of the party who showed no manifest signs of being overheated. Her almost southern-looking beauty was enhanced by the heat. She laughed at the others, and said that it could never be too hot for her.
Jim Horsham looked at her seriously, and said that in Australia he had experienced a heat of a hundred and twenty degrees, and at Christmas time, which made it all the more remarkable.
Pamela's eyes twinkled, and she roused herself from an exhausted reclining to ask: "Why does it make it all the more remarkable?"
"Well—Christmas time, you know," replied Jim, in the tone of one humouring an intellectually weaker vessel.
"Yes, I see that, Jim. But aren't the seasons just the other way round in Australia?"
"Well, of course they are. That's just what I was saying."
She laughed, and subsided again. "It's too hot to argue," she said.
"When were you in Australia?" asked Fred Comfrey.
Horsham replied conscientiously, with dates of arrival and departure, and the further information that he had acted as A. D. C. to an uncle who was Governor of one of the States.