Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/358

 Marjorie was home at six and her father arrived a few minutes later; she bathed, rested, dressed in white, and went downstairs to find that her father also had changed from his business attire and was in white flannels, for it was warm this evening. The summer hum and drone of insects marked the heat, and the sunset rays lay yellow across the white walks and cast sharp, clear shadows of the motionless boughs on the lawn where the sprinklers were spinning gleaming drops of water over the gardens and grass.

It was a week when Canterbury bells were in their blue and white blooms, when hollyhocks were spreading their red and yellow clusters up the tall, straight, pale green stems, and larkspur stood, deep blue and stiff-looking, against the white garage fence.

Midsummer was a beautiful but, to Marjorie Hale, almost a strange season in Evanston; for the women and children of fashionable Evanston long ago have affected the summer hegira to other, and not always cooler places. They merely "shut" their homes, if they can afford it, leaving a servant or two to keep up the house and lawn; or they rent their abodes, furnished, to women and children from other cities who look upon the comfortable, modern little city on the shore of the great lake as a most desirable summer resort.

So most of the Hales' neighbors were away; the Chadens, or at least Mrs. Chaden and Ethel, were at Mackinac; Mrs. Sedgwick and Clara and Elsie were in Colorado; the Cleves at Harbour Point, at the northern end of the lake; Mrs. Vane was traveling in Norway.

Marjorie dropped into a chair in the drawing-room, where an electric fan was maintaining a current of cool air, and picked up the Evanston News-Index for the day's record of departures and the doings of Evans-