throat, and dispensed with her usual swathing of lace.  She confessed that she had not been able to sleep at all; still she kept her trust in Providence, and would scarcely admit to discomfort.  “I am sure there will be showers, and cool the air,” she said, with her sweet optimism.  As she spoke she fanned herself with the great palm-leaf fan with a green bow on the stem, which she was never without during this weather.  “It is certainly very warm so early in the season.  One must feel it a little, but it is always so delightful after a shower that it compensates.”

“You are showing a lovely Christian spirit, mother,” Anderson returned, smiling at her with fond amusement, “but don’t be hypocritical.”

“My son, what do you mean?”

“Mother, dear, you don’t really like this weather.  You only pretend to because man did not make it.”

“Randolph!”

“Only think how you would growl if the mayor and aldermen, or even the president, made this weather!”

“My son, they did not,” Mrs. Anderson responded, solemnly.

“No, and that settles it, I suppose.  If they did, you would say at once they ought to be forced to resign from their offices.  Now, mother, be resigned all you like, but don’t be pleased, for you can’t cheat the Providence that made this beastly heat, and must know perfectly well how beastly it is, better than you or I do, and won’t think any more of us for any pretence in the matter.”

“You shock me, dear.  And, besides, I did not say that I liked it.  I said I liked the weather after a shower.  You look pale this morning, dear, and you don’t talk quite like yourself.  I do wish you would take an umbrella when you go to the office to-day.  It is so very warm.”  Mrs. Anderson had a chronic fear of sunstroke.

When Randolph went away without his umbrella, as he usually did, being, dearly as he loved his mother, impervious to some of her feminine demands, she watched him, standing in the doorway and shaking her head with a dubious air.

That noon she was quite contented, for he did actually carry his umbrella.  The sky in the northwest was threatening, although the sun still shone fiercely in the south.  She herself sat on the doorstep in the shade, and fairly panted like a corpulent old dog.  Her mouth was open and her tongue even lolled a little.  She was, in reality, suffering frightfully.  She had both flesh and nerves, and, given these two adverse conditions to endurance, and the mercury ninety in the shade, there is torture although the spirit is strong.

Although the sky was threatening all the afternoon, it was not until four o’clock that the northwest sky grew distinctly ominous and the rumble of the thunder was audible.  Then Mrs. Anderson called her maid, and they proceeded to close tightly all the windows against the rising wind.

“It is very dangerous indeed to have a draught in the house in a thunder-shower,” Mrs. Anderson always said while closing them.