midday sun
Six years had imperceptibly wrought this change ; it had never struck him before so forcibly as on this day of Susy 's return from the convent school at Santa Clara for the holidays . The woman and child had reached the broad veranda which , on one side of the patio , replaced the old Spanish corridor . It was the single modern innovation that Peyton had allowed himself when he had broken the quadrangular symmetry of the old house with a wooden `` annexe '' or addition beyond the walls . It made a pleasant lounging-place , shadowed from the hot midday sun by sloping roofs and awnings , and sheltered from the boisterous afternoon trade winds by the opposite side of the court . But Susy did not seem inclined to linger there long that morning , in spite of Mrs. Peyton 's evident desire for a maternal tete-a-tete . The nervous preoccupation and capricious ennui of an indulged child showed in her pretty but discontented face , and knit her curved eyebrows , and Peyton saw a look of pain pass over his wife 's face as the young girl suddenly and half-laughingly broke away and fluttered off towards the old garden . Mrs. Peyton looked up and caught her husband 's eye .