“No, my jovial Jane, I won’t. But that’s neither here nor there. Whew! Let’s get out of here. I’m melting. How about you?”
“It is pretty hot,” Jane admitted. It most certainly was. An attic, even on coolish days seems able to store up heat as no other place can, and on a sizzling August afternoon a bakeoven is Iceland in comparison. The only thing to be said in favor of the Lambert’s attic was that it had a northern light if not a northern temperature, and here Paul had set to work.
“Want to take a walk?” he suggested, dropping his paintbrushes into a can of turpentine.
“Can’t. I promised Elise I’d help her with some of the mending.”
“Well, I think I’ll browse around for a while. Tell Aunt Gertrude I’ll be back for supper. She said there wasn’t a thing for me to do.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere in particular. I feel like doing something rash and reckless, but there’s no danger of anything like that—here. Where’s Carl?”
“Out in the garden with Elise and the twins.”
“Well—good-bye. I’ll be back in half an hour or so.”
Paul selected for his solitary ramble a certain rough, dusty, shady lane that led down past the ruins of an old mill. Here on those breathless afternoons a crowd of little urchins were wont to gather to splash and paddle in the gurgling stream that tossed over its stony bed on to the water-fall above the mill. On the opposite side of the road rose a wooded hill, where the tree-tops were gilded with ruddy sunlight, and the deep fern scented recesses were always cool and dim.