is all vulgar and American, and--oh, Minnie, I want to get away, and yet
what shall I do without you to keep me sensible."

"You'll be a long ways off soon," I said, touching the ring under my
hand.

"I wish you could come with me," she said, but I shook my head.

"Here is one dog that isn't going to sit under any rich man's table and
howl for crumbs," I answered. "If he kicked ME, I'd bite him."

At eleven o'clock we had the clambake with beer in the kitchen, and Mr.
von Inwald came, after all. They were really very cheerful, all of them.
Doctor Barnes insisted that Senator Biggs must not fast any longer, and
he ate by my count three dozen clams. At the end, when everybody was
happy and everything forgiven, Mr. Pierce got up and made a speech.

He said he was sorry for what had happened that day, but that much he
had said he still maintained: that to pretend to make people well in
the way most sanatoriums did it was sheer folly, and he felt his
responsibility too keenly to countenance a system that was clearly wrong
and that the best modern thought considered obsolete.

Miss Cobb sat up at that; she is always talking about the best modern
thought.

He said that perfect health, clear skins, bright eyes--he looked at the
women, and except for Miss Patty, there wasn't an honest complexion or a
bright eye in the lot--keen appetites and joy of living all depended on
rational and simple living.

"Hear, hear!" said the men.

"The nearer we live to nature, the better," said Senator Biggs
oracularly.

"Back to nature," shouted Mr. Moody through a clam.

"Exactly," Mr. Pierce said, smiling.

Mrs. Moody looked alarmed. "You don't mean doing without clothes--and
all that!" she protested.

"Surely!" Miss Summers said, holding up her beer glass. "A toast,
everybody! Back to nature, sans rats, sans rouge, sans stays, sans
everything. I'll need to wear a tag with my name on it. Nobody will
recognize me!"

Mr. Pierce got up again at the head of the long kitchen table and said
he merely meant rational living--more air, more exercise, simpler food
and better hours. It was being done now in a thousand fresh-air farms,
and succeeding. Men went back to their business clearer-headed and women
grew more beautiful.

At that, what with the reaction from sitting in the cold station, and
the beer and everything, they all grew enthusiastic. Doctor Barnes made
a speech, telling that he used to be puny and weak, and how he went
i