The Brownbies were wise enough to have learned that it was necessary for their very existence that they should have friends in the land.

On the Sunday the father and Jerry Brownbie were sitting out in the veranda at about noon, and the other two sons, Jack and Joe, were lying asleep on the beds within.
The heat of the day was intense.

There was a wind blowing, but it was that which is called there the hot wind, which comes dry, scorching, sometimes almost intolerable, over the burning central plain of the country.

No one can understand without feeling it how much a wind can add to the sufferings inflicted by heat.

The old man had on a dirty, wretched remnant of a dressing-gown, but Jerry was clothed simply in trowsers and an old shirt.