"It would cool the air, and that would be a blessing. Don't you think it is very close this morning?" he asked, wiping his face with the hand that was not occupied with the reins.
"It is hot certainly, but so it is every day," she said, glancing up at the sky, and feeling relieved to see that there were no storm clouds hovering in sight. "Give me the reins, Rupert, and do you go astern and lie down beside Ducky. You will be cooler there, and these stockings can wait."
"I think that it is a great mistake to mend stockings at all in weather like this, for holes are much cooler than little lumps of darning cotton," remarked Sylvia.
"I don't see the use of wearing them at all. I am comfortable enough with bare feet in my shoes, and so would you be if only you were used to it," said Rumple, coming up with a sackful of grass for Rocky's midday feed on his back. The younger boys took it in turns to provide Rocky's luncheon, and to-day was Rumple's turn.
"Sylvia and I are not boys, you see, and so the same rules do not apply to us, for girls always have to observe the conventions," said Nealie, with the prim little air which she sometimes put on for the sake of her juniors.
"What are they?" demanded Billykins, who at this moment ran up from the other side. But Nealie was spared a lengthy explanation by the timely arrival of Don upon the scene, calling shrilly upon the others to come and see a snake which was swallowing a frog, and getting choked in the process.
"I suppose we ought to kill the snake," said Rupert wearily. "But personally I would rather not."
"That is how I feel; for after all we have no quarrel with the snake, and it may be a very harmless creature after all," said Sylvia. "Don't you remember that Mrs. Warner told us a great many people keep a snake in their houses in preference to a cat, just to keep the mice down."
"Well, there is no accounting for tastes," said Nealie, and then she deftly guided Rocky on to the side of the road, drawing rein under the drooping branches of a lightwood tree, where they could rest for two or three hours until the fiercest heat of the day was past.
They were not as merry as usual to-day. The heat was so great that they all wore a more or less wilted appearance.