“Like _this_?” “Why, certainly! You see this is the greatest corn belt in the country, dear. If it wasn’t for a stretch or two of good corn-growin’ weather like this every summer, the farmers wouldn’t get half a crop, and there’d be a big drop in prosperity.” “And you’d _rather_ have it hot like this, then?” Lena asked, seeming to find him increasingly strange. “You want the farmers to grow their corn, no matter what happens to your wife?” “But, my goodness!” he cried, in his perplexity. “_I_ don’t run the weather, Lena! It don’t make any difference how I might want it, the weather just _is_ the way it is. Besides, we don’t mind it so much.” “Don’t you?” She laughed briefly, and shook her head as though marvelling at the plight in which she found herself, wondering how she had come to it. “No, I suppose you were born and brought up to such weather. I suppose that’s why you didn’t tell me about it before I came here. You probably didn’t realize what this deathly suffocating air might do to the nerves of a human being who’s always lived near the sea. And for your mother to make me stand hours in that oven, trying to talk to all those awful _people_——” “Lena!” Dan was as profoundly astonished as he was distressed. “Why, those are the best people in town; they’re our old family friends, and I don’t know where in the world you’d expect to find better. What fault could you find with ’em, dear? They were all so cordial and pleasant, and so anxious to be friends with you, I thought you’d enjoy——” “Oh, yes!” she cried. “‘Enjoy!’ Oh, yes!” “What’s the matter with ’em? Weren’t their clothes——” “Their clothes!” she echoed desperately. “What do I care about their clothes!” “Then what——” “Oh, don’t!” she moaned. “Don’t ask me what’s wrong with such people!” “But I do ask you, Lena.” “Don’t! My life wouldn’t be long enough to tell you.” “Well, I declare!” the dismayed young husband exclaimed, and sat down beside her on the bed. But she leaned away from him as he would have put his arm about her. “Please don’t try petting me,” she said. “You’ll never be able to make me stand such people. I couldn’t! It isn’t _in_ me to!” “This is just a little spell you’ve got, Lena; it won’t last. In a few days you’ll begin to feel mighty different, and then when you get to knowing mother a little better, and some of the younger people, like Martha Shelby——” “Who’s Martha Shelby?” “You met her and her father this afternoon,” Dan explained. “Harlan and I grew up with her, and she’s one of the finest girls in the world. She’s always just the same—cheerful, you know, and dependable, no matter what happens. You’ll get mighty fond of her, Lena. Everybody always does.” “Was she that great hulking thing with the dried-up little old father that said, ‘Pleased to meet ye, ma’am?’” Dan laughed uneasily. “Why, Martha isn’t ‘hulking.’ She’s a mighty fine-lookin’ girl! She’s tall, but she isn’t as tall as I am, and she’s——”