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“Don’t you let that child live on that kind of food if you want her to live at all,” said Dr. Trumbull. “Lord! what are the women made of, and the men they feed, for that matter? Why, Daniel, there are many people in this place, and hard-working people, too, who eat a quantity of food, yet don’t get enough nourishment for a litter of kittens.”

“What shall I do?” asked Daniel in a puzzled way.

“Do? You can cook a beefsteak yourself, can’t you? Sarah Dean would fry one as hard as sole-leather.”

“Yes, I can cook a beefsteak real nice,” said Daniel.

“Do it, then; and cook some chops, too, and plenty of eggs.”

“I don’t exactly hanker after quite so much sweet stuff,” said Daniel. “I wonder if Sarah’s feelings will be hurt.”

“It is much better for feelings to be hurt than stomachs,” declared Dr. Trumbull, “but Sarah’s feelings will not be hurt. I know her. She is a wiry woman. Give her a knock and she springs back into place. Don’t worry about her, Daniel.”

When Daniel went home that night he carried a juicy steak, and he cooked it, and he and little Dan’1 had a square meal. Sarah refused the steak with a slight air of hauteur, but she behaved very well. When she set away her untasted layer-cakes and pies and cookies, she eyed them somewhat anxiously. Her standard of values seemed toppling before her mental vision. “They will starve to death if they live on such victuals as beefsteak, instead of good nourishing hot biscuits and cake,” she thought. After the supper dishes were cleared away she went into the sitting-room where Daniel Wise sat beside a window, waiting in a sort of stern patience for a whiff of air. It was a very close evening. The sun was red in the low west, but a heaving sea of mist was rising over the lowlands.

Sarah sat down opposite Daniel. “Close, ain’t it?” said she. She began knitting her lace edging.

“Pretty close,” replied Daniel. He spoke with an effect of forced politeness. Although he had such a horror of extreme heat, he was always chary of boldly expressing his mind concerning it, for he had a feeling that he might be guilty of blasphemy, since he regarded the weather as being due to an Almighty mandate. Therefore, although he suffered, he was extremely polite.

“It is awful up-stairs in little Dan’l’s room,” said Sarah. “I have got all the windows open except the one that’s right on the bed, and I told her she needn’t keep more than the sheet and one comfortable over her.”

Daniel looked anxious. “Children ain’t ever overcome when they are in bed, in the house, are they?”

“Land, no! I never heard of such a thing. And, anyway, little Dan’l’s so thin it ain’t likely she feels the heat as much as some.”

“I hope she don’t.”

Daniel continued to sit hunched up on himself, gazing with a sort of mournful irritation out of the window upon the landscape over which the misty shadows vaguely wavered.

Sarah knitted. She could knit in the dark. After a while she rose and said she guessed she would go to bed, as to-morrow was her sweeping-day.

Sarah went, and Daniel sat alone.

Presently a little pale figure stole to him through the dusk — the child, in her straight white night-gown, padding softly on tiny naked feet.

“Is that you, Dan’l?”

“Yes, Uncle Dan’l.”

“Is it too hot to sleep up in your room?”

“I didn’t feel so very hot, Uncle Dan’l, but skeeters were biting me, and a great big black thing just flew in my window!”

“A bat, most likely.”

“A bat!” Little Dan’l shuddered. She began a little stifled wail. “I’m afeard of bats,” she lamented.

Daniel gathered the tiny creature up. “You can jest set here with Uncle Dan’l,” said he. “It is jest a little cooler here, I guess. Once in a while there comes a little whiff of wind.”