Theron returned one afternoon, a little earlier than usual, from a group of pastoral calls.Alice, who was plucking weeds in a border at the shady side of the house, heard his step, and rose from her labors.He was walking slowly, and seemed weary.He took off his high hat, as he saw her, and wiped his brow.The broiling June sun was still high overhead.Doubtless it was its insufferable heat which was accountable for the worn lines in his face and the spiritless air which the wife's eye detected.
She went to the gate, and kissed him as he entered.
"I believe if I were you," she said, "I'd carry an umbrella such scorching days as this.Nobody'd think anything of it.
I don't see why a minister shouldn't carry one as much as a woman carries a parasol."Theron gave her a rueful, meditative sort of smile.
"I suppose people really do think of us as a kind of hybrid female," he remarked.Then, holding his hat in his hand, he drew a long breath of relief at finding himself in the shade, and looked about him.
"Why, you've got more posies here, on this one side of the house alone, than mother had in her whole yard,"he said, after a little."Let's see--I know that one:
that's columbine, isn't it? And that's London pride, and that's ragged robin.I don't know any of the others."Alice recited various unfamiliar names, as she pointed out the several plants which bore them, and he listened with a kindly semblance of interest.