“Poor fellow,” muttered the Weather Man, who even in his own tense excitement did not forget the troubles of his brother weather prophet in New Orleans, “I know just how he feels.  I hope he’s not married.”

He glanced at the clock.  It was 11:56.  In four minutes summer would be due, and with summer a clearer sky, renewed friendships and a united family for the Weather Man.  If it failed him—­I dreaded to think of what might happen.  It was twenty-nine floors to the pavement below, and I am not a powerful man physically.

Together we sat at the table by the thermograph and watched the red line draw mountain ranges along the 50 degree line.  From our seats we could look out over the Statue of Liberty and see the cloud-dimmed glow which told of a censored moon.  The Weather Man was making nervous little pokes at his collar, as if it had a rough edge that was cutting his neck.

Suddenly he gripped the table.  Somewhere a clock was beginning to strike twelve.  I shut my eyes and waited.

Ten-eleven-twelve!

“Look, Newspaper Man, look!” he shrieked and grabbed me by the tie.

I opened my eyes and looked at the thermograph.  At the last stroke of the clock the red line had given a little, final quaver on the 50 degree line and then had shot up like a rocket until it struck 72 degrees and lay there trembling and heaving like a runner after a race.

But it was not at this that the Weather Man was pointing.  There, out in the murky sky, the stroke of twelve had ripped apart the clouds and a large, milk-fed moon was fairly crashing its way through, laying out a straight-away course of silver cinders across the harbor, and in all parts of the heavens stars were breaking out like a rash.  In two minutes it had become a balmy, languorous night.  Summer had come!

I turned to the Weather Man.  He was wiping the palms of his hands on his hips and looking foolishly happy.  I said nothing.  There was nothing that could be said.

Before we left the office he stopped to write out the prophecy for Wednesday, June 21, the First Day of Summer.  “Fair and warmer, with slowly rising temperatur.”  His hand trembled so as he wrote that he forgot the final “e”.  Then we went out and he turned toward his home.

On Wednesday, June 21, it rained.

XXXIII

WELCOME HOME—­AND SHUT UP!

There are a few weeks which bid fair to be pretty trying ones in our national life.  They will mark the return to the city of thousands and thousands of vacationists after two months or two weeks of feverish recuperation and there is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.

In the first place, they are all so offensively healthy.  They come crashing through the train-shed, all brown and peeling, as if their health were something they had acquired through some particular credit to themselves.  If it were possible, some of them would wear their sun-burned noses on their watch-chains, like Phi Beta Kappa keys.