The storm that had been threatening all the morning came at last. College dignity was forgotten, and Barbara became a cross, over-worked, over-heated child, with a strong sense of grievance.
“Jack Grafton, you are a lazy, selfish, inconsiderate beast! If you had to do anything but eat the meals, you wouldn’t criticise them so sharply. You know I’m doing the best I can,—you know it!—and it’s so hot, and there’s so much work—”
David’s serious brown eyes looked reproach at his older brother.
“I’m sorry, Barb,” said Jack, penitently. “I exaggerated about the coffee,—it’s not muddy, only riley. You mustn’t get so fussed up about things that are said in fun. You always used to be able to take a joke. As for the grass, I’ll hie me hence at once. It needs a cutting as badly as Gassy’s hair.”
In spite of herself, Barbara smiled at the comparison. “Poor Cecilia,” she sighed. “I don’t know what on earth to do with that hair of hers. It is so stiff and rebellious that it won’t lie smooth, and yet so thin and straight that it won’t fluff out, like other children’s. I want her to have it cut, but she objects, and pins her faith to that row of curl-papers that makes her look like a Circassian Lady. It is such an ugly shade of red, too. If the child only knew how she looked—”
“She’d never have another happy moment,” interrupted Jack, pushing back his coffee-cup. “Well, to work, to work! My, it looks hot out there in the sunshine!”
An hour later, Barbara raised a flushed face from the ironing-board to greet the Vegetable Man. The Vegetable Man was fat and red, and wheezed as he walked. He was an old patient of the doctor’s, and his bi-weekly trips to the Grafton house were partially of a social nature. His face wore the blank expression of a sheet of sticky fly-paper, and he was equally hard to get rid of. He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and fanned himself with his hat.
“This is a scorcher!” he remarked.
No one appreciated the truth of this statement more strongly than Barbara. But she feared the result of an enthusiastic response to the Vegetable Man. “Yes,” she assented. “It is.”
“Ninety-three, accordin’ to the official thermometer on the weather bureau’s porch. My thermometer’s three degrees higher, an’ when I’m out in the sun, I believe mine’s right. Even the guv’ment’s likely to make mistakes on a day like this.”