. A bit of a cold, I fancy; and for a fortnight he has been more
nervous than usual. The changes in the weather have been so great and so
abrupt that they have worn upon his nerves. He is getting very uneasy
again. Now, after spending the winter, and when spring is almost at
hand, I believe that if he could make up his mind where to go he would
be for setting off to-morrow."

"Really?" said John, in a tone of dismay.

"Quite so," she replied with a nod.

"But," he objected, "it seems too late or too early. Spring may drop in
upon us any day. Isn't this something very recent?"

"It has been developing for a week or ten days," she answered, "and
symptoms have indicated a crisis for some time. In fact," she added,
with a little vexed laugh, "we have talked of nothing for a week but the
advantages and disadvantages of Florida, California, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Virginia at large; besides St. Augustine, Monterey,
Santa Barbara, Aiken, Asheville, Hot Springs, Old Point Comfort,
Bermuda, and I don't know how many other places, not forgetting Atlantic
City and Lakewood, and only not Barbadoes and the Sandwich Islands
because nobody happened to think of them. Julius," remarked Miss Blake,
"would have given a forenoon to the discussion of the two latter places
as readily as to any of the others."

"Can't you talk him along into warm weather?" suggested John, with
rather a mirthless laugh. "Don't you think that if the weather were to
change for good, as it's likely to do almost any time now, he might put
off going till the usual summer flitting?"

"The change in his mind will have to come pretty soon if I am to retain
my mental faculties," she declared. "He might possibly, but I am afraid
not," she said, shaking her head. "He has the idea fixed in his mind,
and considerations of the weather here, while they got him started, are
not now so much the question. He has the moving fever, and I am afraid
it will have to run its course. I think," she said, after a moment,
"that if I were to formulate a special anathema, it would be, 'May
traveling seize you!'"

"Or restlessness," suggested John.

"Yes," she said, "that's more accurate, perhaps, but it doesn't sound
quite so smart. Julius is in that state of mind when the only place that
seems desirable is somewhere else."

"Of course you will have to go," said John mournfully.

"Oh, yes," she replied, with an air of compulsory resignation. "I shall
not only have t