It was blazing hot, even though not yet nine o'clock, and the young farmers plowing beside the fence looked longingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy beside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.
Very beautiful the town-bred "school-ma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty fellows, superb fellows, too, physically, with bare red arms and leather-colored faces.

She was as if builded of the pink and white clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky.

So cool, and sweet, and dainty.
As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of some time in the far future standing a chance of having an introduction to her caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legs stealthily.
Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn.

"That cuss thinks he's ol' hell this morning.

He don't earn his living.