Barlow, from scanning the heavens, turned round and faced the company, which had drooped in several attitudes of exhaustion on the benching of the piazza. “Well, I can most al’ays tell about Jocelyn’s as good as the Weather Report. I told Mrs. Maynard here this mornin’ that the fog was goin’ to burn off.”
“Burn off?” cried Mrs. Alger. “I should think it had!” The other ladies laughed.
“And you’ll see,” added Barlow, “that the wind ’ll change at noon, and we’ll have it cooler.”
“If it’s as hot on the water as it is here,” said Mrs. Scott, “I should think those people would get a sunstroke.”
“Well, so should I, Mrs. Scott,” cordially exclaimed a little fat lady, as if here at last were an opinion in which all might rejoice to sympathize.
“It’s never so hot on the water, Mrs. Merritt,” said Mrs. Alger, with the instructiveness of an old habituée.
“Well, not at Jocelyn’s,” suggested Barlow. Mrs. Alger stopped fanning herself with her newspaper, and looked at him. Upon her motion, the other ladies looked at Barlow. Doubtless he felt that his social acceptability had ceased with his immediate usefulness. But he appeared resolved to carry it off easily. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I must go and pick my peas.”
No one said anything to this. When the factotum had disappeared round the corner of the house, Mrs. Alger turned her head aside, and glanced downward with an air of fatigue. In this manner Barlow was dismissed from the ladies’ minds.
“I presume,” said young Mrs. Scott, with a deferential glance at Grace, “that the sun is good for a person with lung-difficulty.”
Grace silently refused to consider herself appealed to, and Mrs. Merritt said, “Better than the moon, I should think.”