“He is sleeping again now,” she said; “step gently, Mr. Collingwood.”
It was long past dressing time, and they went straight to their rooms. During dinner Miss Fortescue was unusually vitriolic, and afterward they played a game called Adverbs. Jack had only a confused recollection of going out of the room, and being totally unable to guess what was required of him on his return. Soon after this Jeannie and her aunt went upstairs. Jack must have been really idiotic about the game, for Miss Fortescue looked at him anxiously as she shook hands.
“I think you must have overworked yourself,” she said. “Be careful.”
She took several turns up and down her bed-room before ringing for her maid. As she pulled the bell:
“Head over ears,” she remarked.
CHAPTER XIV
Long-continued drought had marked this summer-time, and when in September no rain fell the papers had been full of acrimonious comments on the ways of water-companies. The water-company at fault was really no earthly controller, and the most intelligent body of men can not milk the clouds. But the British public is not happy without its grievance, and just now it was certainly enjoying itself immensely.
Wroxton had hitherto suffered less than other towns, but by the beginning of October the supply began to cause uneasiness. But the water-company had another spring up its sleeve, and, to quiet complaints, about the second week in the month it was drawn upon, and the intelligent public was deprived of its right to grumble.
The weather was hot and unseasonable, with the heat not of an invigorating sun, but of the closed and vitiated atmosphere of a packed room. Day after day a blanket of gray cloud covered the earth as with a lid, yet the rain came not. A windless, suffocating calm environed the earth; it was rank weather for man and beast. The perennial green of the great downs faded to an unwholesome yellow, like a carpet that is losing its colour from the sun, and the nights were dewless. The heavenly forces that temper the frosts of winter with a benigant sun and the heats of summer with the cool dews of night seemed to have been struck dead. Clouds overset the earth, but neither dispersed nor discharged. It was as if the vitality of the seasons had failed, as if the earth was abandoned to decay.
Jeannie was immune from the assaults of climate, and Miss Fortescue went out so seldom that she found no great disagreeableness in the stagnation of the air. But Colonel Raymond felt it acutely, and said it was like waiting for the rains in India. Miss Clara Clifford could no more write poetry than she could play the mandolin, and Miss Phœbe would have as soon thought of playing the mandolin as of embarking on an epic. But the Colonel gave up the brisk walks while such dispiriting weather lasted, and though Mrs. Raymond dwindled and paled, she found her consolation in seeing the children play hide-and-seek among the gooseberry bushes.