The wealth of golden sunlight poured a quite enervating yet oddly comforting heat over the house where day long it faced the dusty stretch of road. Two birds were making a great to-do in a cool spot found among the branches of a tree next door, and down the street a colored woman was announcing herself melodiously as a purveyor of strawberries. It was April afternoon.
Sally Carrol Happer, resting her chin on her arm, and her arm on an old window-seat, gazed sleepily down over the spangled dust whence the heat waves were rising for the first time this spring. She was watching a very ancient Ford turn a perilous corner and rattle and groan to a jolting stop at the end of the walls. She made no sound, and in a minute a strident familiar whistle rent the air. Sally Carrol smiled and blinked.
A head appeared tortuously from under the cartop below.
"Sure enough!" she said in affected surprise. "I guess maybe not."
"Eatin' green peach. 'Spect to die any minute."
Clark twisted himself a last impossible notch to get a view of her face.
"Water's warm as a kettla steam, Sally Carrol. Wanta go swimmin'?"
"Hate to move," sighed Sally Carrol lazily, "but I reckon so."
