The summer rising of the parent Needhams regularly occurred about seven. In town, during the season of lengthened nights, the household was suffered to slumber perhaps a half hour longer; but matinal "dawdling," as the Rev. Needham put it, was a symptom of decadence to be scrupulously shunned. The Rev. Needham had a rather definite persuasion that all the people in the East inclined towards late rising. He had a theory that a day well begun was bound to end well. It didn't, as a matter of fact, so far as he was concerned—at least there was nothing at all dependable about it; but these collapses, these drab failures of the real to coincide with the ideal, these sloughings off from a kind of Platonic scheme of perfection, constituted what stood as perhaps the reverend gentleman's most distinguishing quality. Here was a man marked for a kind of almost rhythmic disaster. The wheel of life never ran smoothly, but kept bumping over sly pebbles of chagrin and disappointment. The Rev. Needham was like a Middle Age (or perhaps early Chinese) delinquent, strung up for chastisement, his arms pinioned to a beam overhead, and the mere points of his toes permitted to touch the ground. An inch or a few inches relaxed, and he would be all right. If he could only get his heels down! But that, alas, was just the trouble with the Rev. Needham: however dignified and calm he might appear externally, there never was, there never could seem to be, an entire and sincere consciousness of solid ground under his feet. Sometimes he would sigh: "Ah, at last!" But anon there would be a devilish tingling in the heels, which would remind him that they were still upreared. The poor man's destiny seemed eternally a thing suspended. It dangled and flopped, like a rope's end in nervous, persistent gusts.
Anna Needham relinquished sleep at the hour specified by her spouse cheerfully, as a rule, though there were also occasions when raillery and even discreet rib-proddings entered into the program. Mrs. Needham was, of course, well inured to these regularities of routine, just as her very fibre was toughened and moulded to the ministerial caliber generally. Fundamentally, she was a person of slightly less strenuous tendencies than her husband. Anna Needham was the type of woman whose life is very largely shaped, as is her destiny largely determined, by the man with whom she lives. Her nature was naturally somewhat more amenable than his. Still, she had her distinct rebellions, too. She could take a stand of her own in an hour of crisis. The Rev. Needham's was a nature that did not weather storms any too well. Yes, in time of storms Anna was the more seaworthy. For one thing, perhaps, she had fewer ideals. Thus she did not experience quite such blasting shocks over upheavals and cataclysms. But it must be confessed that this apparent stability was touched, perhaps one might say, rather, a little diluted by a few parts moral or intellectual laziness. Comparative criticism of the Needhams, husband and wife, usually fell into two major divisions. There were, in other words, two factions: those who maintained she was less profound than he, and those who would insist that she had more common sense. But that they were economically well-mated seemed pretty generally accepted. It was a coalition in which appeared the very minimum of waste, since one was always ready (or in her case perhaps merely inclined) to shut off the spigot of the other's temperamental excesses.
On this particular July morning there wasn't a hint of friction over the proposition of getting up. The Rev. Needham began his brisk, determined stretching at the first stroke of seven. Anna lay passive till the last stroke; but as the strident and spiteful clangour of the Dutch clock downstairs resolved back again into a monotonous though hardly less crabbed tick-tock, tick-tock, the lady yawned deeply and with just a concluding gurgle of relish. There was a guest already in the house, another guest on the way. Hostesses, however soft the bed, aren't likely to surrender to tempting inertia under such circumstances.
As a matter of fact, the bed was not a very soft one. Or rather, it was very soft in places and very hard in others. Perhaps one of the enduring charms of small resort cottage life is the amusing inequality of things. The best and the worst hobnob. Lo, here is a true democracy! And virtues utterly commonplace in your urban ménage may very easily be given a most heavenly lustre in the wilderness.
"Well, Anna," he said, in his best tone of fresh, early morning cheerfulness, "I guess it's time to get up."
"Alf, you don't mean to tell me that was seven!"
She had counted the strokes; but it was customary to have a little conversation about the time of day before arising: a sort of pleasant, innocuous tongue-limbering, a lubrication of the way to more important themes later on. Such gentle, indirect prevarications may perhaps be looked upon indulgently, even when, as in this case, they crop out in clerical families.
The Rev. Needham proceeded to dress and shave.
He was in a good, confident, substantial mood today; rose singing. The Rev. Needham was very apt to arise with song in his mouth, bravely defying the chance of his going to bed with a wail. This morning the selection was that fine old Laudes Domini which seemed peculiarly appropriate, both fitting the hour and reflecting the joyous state of the singer's heart.
"When morning gilds the skies