a false position."

"I must go and see where that poor little wretch of a child is," said
Grace, going out of the room. She returned in an hour, and asked her
mother for the arnica. "Bella has had a bump," she explained.

"Why, have you been all this time looking for her?

"No, I couldn't find her, and I've been reading. Barlow has just brought
her in. HE could find her. She fell out of a tree, and she's frightfully
bruised."

She was making search on a closet shelf as she talked. When she
reappeared with the bottle in her hand, her mother asked, "Is n't it very
hot and close?"

"Very," said Grace.

"I should certainly think they would perish," said Mrs. Breen, hazarding
the pronoun, with a woman's confidence that her interlocutor would apply
it correctly.

When Grace had seen Bella properly bathed and brown-papered, and in the
way to forgetfulness of her wounds in sleep, she came down to the piazza,
and stood looking out to sea. The ladies appeared one by one over the
edge of the cliff, and came up, languidly stringing their shawls after
them, or clasping their novels to their bosoms.

"There isn't a breath down there," they said, one after another. The last
one added, "Barlow says it's the hottest day he's ever seen here."