"He likes to be independent." Strict honesty in thought made her add, "And like me, too, I fear." The picnic day was one of those intensely hot June days when the whole world seems to stand quivering and breathlessly attent while Nature works out one of her miracles over fields of grain, over prairie flowers, over umbrageous trees and all things borne upon the bosom of Mother Earth, checking the succulence of precocious overgrowths, hardening fibre, turning plant energy away from selfish exuberance in mere stalk building into the altruistic sacrament of ripening fruit and hardening grain.

A wise old alchemist is Mother Earth, working in time but ever for eternity.
The picnickers who went out to the park early in the day were driven for refuge from the blazing sun to the trees and bushes, where prostrated by the heat they lay limp and flaccid upon the grass.

Miss Hazel Sleighter, who for some reason which she could not explain to herself had joined the first contingent of picnickers, was cross, distinctly and obviously cross.

The heat was trying to her nerves, but worse, it made her face red--red all over.

Her pink parasol intensified the glow upon her face.
"What a fool I was to come, in this awful heat," she said to herself.
"They won't be here for hours, and I will be just like a wash-rag." Nor was Larry enjoying the picnic.