Mrs. Thorne laughed out a little sigh. "I have brought you a problem. But we will talk when it is cooler. Don't you—don't you shave but twice a week when I am away, Henry?"
"I shave every day, when I think of it. I never go anywhere, and I don't have anybody here if I can possibly avoid it. It is all a man can do to live and be up to his work."
"I know; it's frightful to work in such weather. How the mill roars! It starts the blood to hear it. Last spring it sounded like a cataract; now it roars like heat behind furnace doors. Which is your room now?"
"O Lord! I sleep anywhere; begin in my bed generally and end of the piazza floor. It will be the grass if this keeps on."
"Mrs. Thorne continued to laugh spasmodically at her husband's careless speeches, not at what he said so much as through content in his familiar way of saying things. Under their light household talk, graver, questioning looks were exchanged, the unappeased glances of friends long separated, who realize on meeting again that letters have told them nothing.
"Why didn't you write me about this terrible heat?"
"Why didn't you write me that you were not well?"
"I am well."
"You don't look it—anything but."
"I am always ghastly after a journey. It isn't a question of health that brought me. But—never mind. Ring for Ito, will you? I want my keys."