“Sitting out in the cool,” remarked Mrs. Preen. “I don’t blame him, poring all day long over those accounts and things. Call him in, Jane.”
“Coming,” said Oliver, in response to Jane’s call from the open window.
He crossed the grass slowly, fanning himself with his straw hat. His fair face—an unusual thing with him—was scarlet.
“You look red-hot, Oliver,” laughed his sister.
“If it is as hot to-morrow as it is to-day we shall get a baking,” returned Oliver.
“In this intense weather nothing makes one feel the heat like work, and I suppose you’ve been hard at it this afternoon,” said his mother in a tone of compassion, for she disliked work naturally very much herself.
“Of course; I had to be,” answered Oliver.
He and Jane sat together under the shade of the walnut tree after tea. When it grew a little cooler they went to the Inlets, that favourite resort of theirs; a spot destined to bear a strange significance for one of them in the days to come; a haunting remembrance.
II
The white mist, giving promise of a hot and glorious day, had hardly cleared itself from the earth, when, at ten o’clock on the Thursday morning, Jane and Oliver Preen set off in the gig for North Villa, both of them as spruce as you please; Jane in that pretty summer dress she had spent so much work over, a straw hat with its wreath of pink may shading her fair face, Oliver with a white rose in his button-hole. The party was first to assemble at Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s, and to go from thence in waggonettes. There had been some trouble about the gig, Mr. Preen wanting it himself that day, or telling Jane and Oliver that he did, and that they could walk. Jane almost cried, declaring she did not care to arrive at North Villa looking like a milkmaid, hot and red with walking; and Mr. Preen gave way. Oliver was to drive himself and Jane, Sam being sent on to Crabb to bring back the gig.