“What simple ideas you do get into your mind, Abby,” said she, with the air of one conscious of superior intellect.  “A horse ain’t human, Abby.  He ain’t no idea he’s wearing a hat....  The Deacon says their heads get hotter with them rediculous bunnits on.  He favors a green branch.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Daggett, foiling a suspicious movement of Dolly’s switching tail, “mebbe that’s so; I feel some cooler without a hat.  But ’tain’t safe to let the sun beat right down, the way it does, without something between.  Then, you see, Henry’s got a lot o’ these horse hats in the store to sell.  So of course Dolly, he has to wear one.”

Mrs. Whittle cautiously wiped the dust from her hard red cheeks.

“My! if it ain’t hot,” she observed.  “You’re so fleshy, Abby, I should think you’d feel it something terrible.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Daggett placidly.  “Of course I’m fleshy, Ann; I ain’t denying that; but so be you.  You don’t want to think about the heat so constant, Ann.  Our thermometer fell down and got broke day before yesterday, and Henry says ’I’ll bring you up another from the store this noon.’  But he forgot all about it.  I didn’t say a word, and that afternoon I set out on the porch under the vines and felt real cool—­not knowing it was so hot—­when along comes Mrs. Fulsom, a-pantin’ and fannin’ herself.  ‘Good land, Abby!’ says she; ’by the looks, a body’d think you didn’t know the thermometer had risen to ninety-two since eleven o’clock this morning.’  ‘I didn’t,’ I says placid; ‘our thermometer’s broke.’  ‘Well, you’d better get another right off,’ says she, wiping her face and groaning.  ’It’s an awful thing, weather like this, not to have a thermometer right where you can see it.’  Henry brought a real nice one home from the store that very night; and I hung it out of sight behind the sitting room door; I told Henry I thought ’twould be safer there.”

“That sounds exactly like you, Abby,” commented Mrs. Whittle censoriously.  “I should think Henry Daggett would be onto you, by now.”

“Well, he ain’t,” said Mrs. Daggett, with mild triumph.  “He thinks I’m real cute, an’ like that.  It does beat all, don’t it? how simple menfolks are.  I like ’em all the better for it, myself.  If Henry’d been as smart an’ penetrating as some folks, I don’t know as we’d have made out so well together.  Ain’t it lucky for me he ain’t?”

Ann Whittle sniffed suspiciously.  She never felt quite sure of Abby Daggett:  there was a lurking sparkle in her demure blue eyes and a suspicious dimple near the corner of her mouth which ruffled Mrs. Whittle’s temper, already strained to the breaking point by the heat and dust of their midday journey.

“Well, I never should have thought of such a thing, as going to Ladies’ Aid in all this heat, if you hadn’t come after me, Abby,” she said crossly.  “I guess flannel petticoats for the heathen could have waited a spell.”