There was no symptom of a breeze in the still, warm valley, nor even on the jagged ridges of the opposing hills.

The professor, with all his appliances for coolness and comfort, felt the need of one strongly.
Mellowed by the distance, the long shriek of the engine, on its way from New York, streamed upon his ears and set him thinking.

A good many years since he had been to New York!--nine, positively nine--not since the year after his wife's death.

It hardly seemed so long, looking back upon it.

He wondered whether time had passed as silently and swiftly to his daughters as to him.