Dick Wentworth sat still, not realizing the sudden change until a stiff breeze streaming in through the blinds blew straight into his face, bearing with it a delicious odor from the cape jessamines that grew thickly about the house. Then he rose and hurried to an open lattice, quite as if he had expected to discover there some huge bellows or some gigantic electric fan stirring the air into rapid motion. “What has happened?” he asked in astonishment. “Nothing, except that the tide has turned,” answered Larry. “But the breeze? Where does that come from?” “From the sea. It always comes in with the flood-tide, and we’ve been waiting for it. Pull on your coat or stand out of the draught; the sudden change might give you a cold.” “Then you don’t have to melt for whole days at a time, but get a little relief like this, now and then?” “We don’t melt at all. We don’t suffer half as much from hot weather as the people of northern cities do—particularly New York.” “But why not, if you have to undergo a grilling like this every day?” “It doesn’t happen every day, or anything like every day. It never lasts long and we know how to endure it.” “How? I’m anxious to learn. I may be put on the broiler again and I want to be prepared.” “Well, we begin by recognizing facts and meeting them sensibly. It is always hot here in the sun, during the summer months, and so we don’t go out into the glare during the torrid hours. From about eleven till four o’clock nobody thinks of quitting the coolest, shadiest place he can find, while in northern cities those are the busiest hours of the day, even when the mercury is in the nineties. We do what we have to do in the early forenoon and the late afternoon. During the heat and burden of the day we keep still, avoiding exertion of every kind as we might shun pestilence or poison. The result is that sun strokes and heat prostrations are unknown here, while at the north during every hot spell your newspapers print long columns of the names of persons who have fallen victims.” “Then again,” added Calhoun, “we build for hot weather while you build to meet arctic blasts. We set our houses separately in large plots of ground, while you pack yours as close together as possible. We provide ourselves with broad verandahs and bury ourselves in shade, while you are planning your heating apparatus and doubling up your window sashes to keep the cold out.” “It distresses me sorely,” broke in Larry, “to interrupt an interesting discussion to which I have contributed all the wisdom I care to spare, but the sun is more than half way down the western slope of the firmament, and if we are to get the dory into the water this afternoon it is high time for us to be wending our way through Spring Street to the neighborhood of Gadsden’s Green—so called, I believe, because some Gadsden of ancient times intended it to become green.”