"Warm? Warm ain't any name for it! We been having a hot spell nobody remembers the like of, man nor boy, for twenty years. Why, day before yesterday—say, I wish you'd been here! Talk about suffering! I was having one of my bad days, and the least little thing I'd do I'd be panting like a tuckered hound. Say, how was the war?"
"Oh, so-so," answered the returned private.
"You tell it well. Seems to me if I'd been off skyhootin' round in foreign lands—say, how about them French women? Pretty bold lot, I guess, if you can believe all you—"
The parrot in its cage at the end of the porch climbed to a perch with beak and claw.
"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" it screeched. The judge glared murderously at it.
"Wilbur Cowan, you bad, bad, bad child—not to let us know!" Mrs. Penniman threw back the screen door and rushed to embrace him. "You regular fighting so-and-so!" she sobbed.
"Where'd you get that talk?" he demanded.
Mrs. Penniman wiped her eyes with a dish towel suspended from one arm.
"Oh, we heard all about you!"
She was warm, and shed gracious aromas. The returned one sniffed these.