Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/87

 strolled up the two steps to the low porch of the old wooden house where Lennie lived with her mother and father. The heat was so excessive that Gareth did not wear a coat, but a belt rather than suspenders held his trousers in place over his slender hips. He carried a tin box with a handle, a box packed with cotton, in which he might deposit such eggs as he discovered. Lennie appeared at the door almost as soon as Gareth had rung the bell. She, too, was dressed as coolly as possible, in a blue and white linen frock. To protect her face from the sun she wore a wide, flapping, straw garden hat, spattered with red poppies. Incongruously, with this costume, in deference to the nature of their projected excursion, she had donned heavy, high walking-boots.

I thought perhaps, Gareth said, that you wouldn't want to come along; it's so hot.

O, I don't mind the heat, Lennie replied. If one is out in it, it isn't half so bad as it is in the house. All the morning I've been working inside helping mother with the housework, and roasting.

They started out, this queerly matched pair, brought together by the paucity of selection offered either of them, walking slowly, turning, at the corner, down Leclair Avenue, passing, unaware, the Temple of the Parce, crossing the tracks and traversing the business section of the town. As during the hour of the siesta in an Italian village, the streets were practically deserted; a few empty bug-