"WHEW, but it's hot here!" grumbled Sergeant Noll Terry, of the United States Army."That's an odd complaint to hear from a young man who served so actively for two years in the tropics," laughed Mrs. Overton, a short, plump, middle-aged matron."Well, Mother, it is a hot day," put in Sergeant Hal Overton quietly."Yes, it is," agreed Hal's mother, "though you two, who came from the Philippines the very picture of health can't feel the weather to-day much. New Jersey isn't in the tropics."Hal's mother said that with an air of finality. Her son and his chum had been through the most strenuous forms of active army service in Uncle Sam's colonial possessions, the Philippine Islands. If they could endure the heat in that tropical belt, even that day's broiling weather at home must seem cool by comparison. "I suppose you have an idea, Mother, that the nearer you go to the equator the hotter the weather gets.""Well, isn't it so?" challenged Mrs. Overton."It may be, as far as actual degrees of heat are marked off on the thermometer," explained Sergeant Hal. "But I'll stick to it, Mother, that the average of weather that we struck in the Philippines was not nearly so disagreeable as the weather is here to-day.""That's so," nodded youthful Sergeant Terry, with emphasis.