Besides she's done for--unless she looses Quarrier and starts on a duke-hunt over in Blinky's country! ...
Is anybody on for a sail?
Is anybody on for anything?
No?
Oh, very well.
Shove that decanter north by west, Billy." This was characteristic of the dog-days at Shotover.

The dog-days in town were very different; the city threw open the parks to the poor at night; horses fell dead in the streets; pallid urchins, stripped naked, splashed and rolled and screeched in the basin of the City Hall fountain under the indifferent eyes of the police.
As for Plank he was too busy to know what the thermometer was about; he had no time for anything outside of his own particular business except to go every day to the big, darkened house in lower Fifth Avenue where the days had been hard on Siward and the nights harder.
Siward, however, could walk now, using his crutches still, but often stopping to gently test his left foot and see how much weight he was able to bear on it--even taking a tentative step or two without crutch support.

He drove when he thought it prudent to use the horses in the heat, usually very early in the morning, though sometimes at night with Plank when the latter had time to run his touring-car through the park and out into the Bronx or Westchester for a breath of air.
But Plank wanted him to go away, get out of the city for his convalescence, and Siward flatly declined, demanding that Plank permit him to do his share in the fight against the Inter-County people.
And Plank, utterly unable to persuade him, and the more hampered because of his anxiety about Siward--though that young man did not know it--wore himself out providing Siward with such employment in the matter as would lightly occupy him without doing any good to the enemy.
So Siward, stripped to his pajamas, pored over reams of typewritten matter and took his brief walking exercise in the comparative cool of the evening and drove when he dared use his horses; or, sitting beside Plank, whizzed northward through the starry darkness of the suburbs.
When it was that he first began to like Plank very much he could not exactly remember.

He was not, perhaps, aware of how much he liked him.
Plank's unexpected fits of shyness, of formality, often and often amused him.

But there was a subtler feeling under the unexpressed amusement, and, beneath all, a constantly increasing sub-stratum of respect.