When he was not engaged in either pursuit Aquarius Wharff was a mild and neighbourly man who lived with his “old maid” sister, Virgo, in the little brown house beyond the currier shop. His twin delusions were his only “outs,” and his tolerant neighbours in Palermo had long ago ceased to pay any attention to his divagations. But when a man stands for two hours in the broiling sun in one attitude he makes a picture that disturbs his friends. Uncle Lysimachus Buck, whose chair was propped against the side of the store in the shade, desisted from “teaming” a worried caterpillar with his cane and called querously: “For timenation’s sake, ’Quar’us, come set down out o’ the sun, do! It makes me steam and sweat to look at ye.” “Wind quart’rin’ to west’ard, mack’rel sky, sign o’ rain, hard times gen’rally and nothin’ ’cept air put into doughnut holes nowadays,” croaked Aquarius without turning his head; “I jest see six crows fly s’uth’ards from the Cod-Head spruces, and that means somethin’ ’sides a heavy fog.” He shifted to his other leg and set his neck more stiffly, and continued at his feat of endurance with the pertinacity of an Indian fakir. “He’ll git sunstruck, sure’s Tophet’s a poor place to store powder in,” commented Buck. His snappy tones indicated that his selfishness at being annoyed by the figure in the sun’s glare was more provoked than his solicitude. “Why don’t you git under a tree and rest?” he demanded. “An’ if you’re bound and determined to play dog-vane, then hold an emb’rel over yourself. Swan, if it don’t make me dizzy to watch him!” Uncle Buck took off his cotton hat and turned the burdock leaves in the crown to bring their cool surface next to his bald head. “I’ve thought at times that ’Quar’us was losin’ his mind some--more’n what runs in the family,” observed Dow Babb, unhooking his toe from behind his ankle and immediately retwisting his long, gaunt legs in the other direction. His townsmen had nicknamed him “Fly” Babb on account of this trait. “He ain’t nobody’s fool, ’Quar’us ain’t,” remarked Brickett, who, in the midday dearth of traffic, was lounging at the shady side of the store. “Them Wharffses is weather-struck and always was so, ’way back. It runs in the fam’ly--seems to! Old Gran’ther Wharff, you know, kept a di’ry of storms, droughts, hot and cold streaks and all such, till the day he died, and his son Zodiac figured out of that di’ry all the signs of storms and so forth. I’ve got ’em writ some’ere in my desk--change o’ wind, birds’ flyin’s, bugs’ actions, cobweb signs on the grass and all! Yass’r, the weather streak runs in the family, all right.” “I reckon it must ’a’ been runnin’ hard in Zodiac Wharff,” snorted Buck, “to make him saddle sech names on to his children as ’Quarius, Capri-cornus, A-rees, Virgo and--what was that light-complected one that went West and got lugged off by a terronado? I can never think of that dum name!” “Sagittar’us, wa’n’t it?” suggested Brickett.