the filmiest cloud to veil the sun; you could see the ether
shimmering over the land, and the fields of yellow grain looked like
lakes of molten metal. Shaded by our wide straw hats, Penelope and I had
no thought of the tropic heat. We were engrossed in the reaper as it cut
its way through the wheat; we followed it, counting the sheaves as they
dropped with mechanical precision; we stepped along untiringly in its
wake, as though the rough stubble were the smoothest of paths, and the
clatter of the machine the sweetest of music. Above the raucous clacking
I heard my mother calling, and, suspecting some needless injunction not
to get overheated, I pretended not to hear and looked the other way. But
she was insistent. When we had rounded the field again, she crossed the
road to the fence; the reaper stopped, and on a day so still that a dog's
bark carried a mile there was no escape from her uplifted voice.
Reluctantly Penelope and I abandoned our enchanting travel and obeyed the
summons.

"Penelope," my mother said, taking the girl by the hand, "come into the
house. Your uncle is here."

Penelope stopped and looked up into my mother's face, and there was
wonder in her eyes. She had forgotten her uncle, so rarely had she heard
her father speak of him, and I was quicker than she to grasp the meaning
of his coming, for I remembered that Rufus, who never had had a real
idea, who made his first success by giving away a prize with every pound
of tea. I believed that he had come to take Penelope from me, and with
every step I saw my fears confirmed.

"Your Uncle Rufus," my mother said, and she closed her lips very tightly
as she walked on.

The parlor shades were up--an ominous sign, for the parlor would only be
opened to a person of importance. Had the Professor visited us, the
humbler sitting-room would have been quite good enough to receive him in,
and it seemed a strange commentary on his harsh judgment that his brother
should be ushered into the stately chamber where the very air grew old in
dignified seclusion. Still more forcibly was this idea impressed on my
mind when I stood at the door and saw my father sitting very erect, on a
most uncomfortable chair, listening respectfully to the stranger's rapid
words.

Rufus Blight spoke in a loud voice; he lolled in the big walnut rocker,
with his arm stretched across the centre table, to the peril of my
mother's precious Swiss chalet and the glass dome which protec