h he was making.

In fact, in the early summer everybody went out of town. The few who
ever revisited the place in August reported that they hadn't seen a
soul on the street.

It was a sort of longing for the simple life, for nature, that came
over everybody. Some people sought it at the seaside, where nature had
thrown out her broad plank walks and her long piers and her vaudeville
shows. Others sought it in the heart of the country, where nature had
spread her oiled motor roads and her wayside inns. Others, like the
Newberrys, preferred to "rough it" in country residences of their own.

Some of the people, as already said, went for business reasons, to
avoid the suspicion of having to work all the year round. Others went
to Europe to avoid the reproach of living always in America. Others,
perhaps most people, went for medical reasons, being sent away by their
doctors. Not that they were ill; but the doctors of Plutoria Avenue,
such as Doctor Slyder, always preferred to send all their patients out
of town during the summer months. No well-to-do doctor cares to be
bothered with them. And of course patients, even when they are anxious
to go anywhere on their own account, much prefer to be sent there by
their doctor.

"My dear madam," Dr. Slyder would say to a lady who, as he knew, was
most anxious to go to Virginia, "there's really nothing I can do for
you." Here he spoke the truth. "It's not a case of treatment. It's
simply a matter of dropping everything and going away. Now why don't
you go for a month or two to some quiet place, where you will simply
_do nothing?_" (She never, as he knew, did anything, anyway.) "What do
you say to Hot Springs, Virginia?--absolute quiet, good golf, not a
soul there, plenty of tennis." Or else he would say, "My dear madam,
you're simply _worn out_. Why don't you just drop everything and go to
Canada?--perfectly quiet, not a soul there, and, I believe, nowadays
quite fashionable."

Thus, after all the patients had been sent away, Dr. Slyder and his
colleagues of Plutoria Avenue managed to slip away themselves for a
month or two, heading straight for Paris and Vienna. There they were
able, so they said, to keep in touch with what continental doctors were
doing. They probably were.

Now it so happened that both the parents of Miss Dulphemia
Rasselyer-Brown had been sent out of town in this fashion. Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown's distressing experience with Yahi-Bahi had left her in
a condi