places get a great deal more heat. Look at Egypt."

"Permit me to disagree," he interrupted her at once, when she
pathetically squirmed to another subject. "There's more than one
side to this matter. You are looking at this matter from a totally
wrong angle. . . . Let me inform you that statistics. . . ." Mrs.
Madison's gentle voice was no more than just audible in the short
intervals he permitted; a blind listener would have thought Mr.
Trumble at the telephone. Hedrick was thankful when his mother
finally gave up altogether the display of her ignorance,
inaccuracy, and general misinformation, and Trumble talked alone.
That must have been the young man's object; certainly he had
struggled for it; and so it must have pleased him. He talked on
and on and on; he passed from one topic to another with no pause;
swinging over the gaps with a "Now you take," or, "And that
reminds me," filling many a vacancy with "So-and-so and
so-and-so," and other stencils, while casting about for material
to continue. Everything was italicized, the significant and the
trivial, to the same monotone of emphasis. Death and shoe-laces
were all the same to him.

Anything was all the same to him so long as he talked.

Hedrick's irritation was gradually dispelled; and, becoming used
to the sound, he found it lulling; relaxed his attitude and
drowsed; Mr. Lindley was obviously lost in a reverie; Mrs.
Madison, her hand shading her eyes, went over her market-list for
the morrow and otherwise set her house in order; Laura alone sat
straight in her chair; and her face was toward the vocalist, but
as she was in deep shadow her expression could not be guessed.