On the wharves was the smell of tarred seams and cordage,—­sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass, regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through wailed the helpless, pitiful cry of a slowly murdered infancy; and out on the blazing thoroughfares where business had to be busy, strong men were dropping down, and reporters were hovering about upon the skirts of little crowds, gathering their items; making their hay while this terrible sun was shining.

What did Mrs. Argenter care?

The sun would be going down now, in a little while; then the cool piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,—­yellow Alderney milk,—­would be delightful.  Once or twice she did think of “Argie” in New York,—­gone thither on some perplexing, hurried errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of which she had only half heard,—­and remembered that the heat must be “awful” there.  But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, she would surely speak to him about getting off for a while to Rye, or Mount Desert.

She came by and by to the end of her volume, and found that the serial she was following ran on into the next.

“Provoking,” she said, tossing it down to the end of the sofa, “and neither Sylvie nor I can get into town in this heat, and Argie thinks it such a bother to be asked to go to Loring’s.”

Just then Sylvie’s step came lightly up the stairs.  She looked into the large cool dressing-room where her mother lay.

“I’m only up for my ’Confession Album’,” she said.  “But O Mater Amata! if you’d just come down and help me through!  I know they’d stay to tea and go home in the cool, if I only knew how to ask them; but if I said a word I should be sure to drive them away. You can do it; and they would if you came.  Please do!”

“You silly child!  Won’t you ever be able to do anything yourself?  When you were a little girl, you wouldn’t carry a message, because you could get into a house, but didn’t know how to get out!  And now you are grown up, you can get people into the house to see you, but you don’t know how to ask them to stay to tea!  What shall I ever do with you?”

“I don’t know.  I’m awfully afraid of—­nice girls!”

“Sylvie, I’m ashamed of you!  As if you had any other kind of acquaintance, or weren’t as nice as any of them!  I wouldn’t suggest it, even to myself, if I were you.”