She wore a cool-looking muslin gown, girt at the waist with a blue silk belt. Bands of insertion around the neck made it look particularly cool, and the soft folds in which the skirt hung gave it a very uncrushable and comfortable appearance.
“It’s almost 90°,” she said, looking at the thermometer. “Oh, dear, if it were not so hot I’d go down to the beach. If I were once there, I’m sure that I should be more comfortable. It would be shady over by the rocks. At any rate, it could n’t be as hot as it is here.”
“If you really wish to go,” said Mrs. Barlow, “Thomas may drive you down. It won’t hurt the gray horse to be driven down slowly, and I think myself that you will find it a little more comfortable there.”
“Then I ’ll take a book or two, and stay until dinner-time.”
“Yes, and if you do not take a thermometer with you, I believe that you may forget the heat. I think that you have worked yourself up a little to-day watching the mercury.”
So Brenda, with an armful of books, drove down to the beach, and placing her camp-chair in a sheltered nook under the shadow of the rocks, began to read. But in a short time she tired of her book. It was the fifth or sixth novel by the same author that she had read since leaving the city. All the others she had pronounced “perfectly splendid,” and perhaps if she had read the volume in her hand as the first of the series, it might have pleased her as well. But now it seemed to her like a feeble echo of the
