the health of your mother." He felt himself a man of the world, and hastily resolved to try a larger watering-place in which to practise his profession the following summer, although he had theretofore never had good luck in such places.
"Mother is doing splendidly," said Sabine. "But if you already count the evening lost, Doctor, what do you think, Karl—" and she turned to her brother—"of showing the Doctor our woods?"
"Your woods?"
"That's what we call them," said Karl. "They do really belong to us alone. None of the patients at the resort ever get out this far, you know. There are lots of beautiful walks—some just like in a virgin forest."
"Well, of course, we'll have to have a look at one of those. I accept with pleasure."
The carriage was ordered to proceed to The Range in any case, and under conduct of brother and sister Doctor Graesler started off along a lane so narrow that they had to walk single file, at first through corn-stalks as high as a man’s head, then across meadowland, and finally into the woods.
The doctor mentioned that he had been coming here every summer for six years and yet had no real acquaintance with the region. But then, that was his fate. Even when he was a ship's-doctor he had seen only the coast, or, at best, the harbour-towns and their immediate environs; for his duties had nearly always prevented him from roaming farther inland. As Karl made known, through repeated questions, his interest in sea-voyages and distant lands, the doctor named at random several maritime cities to or through which his profession had years before led him; and the thought that he might thus be accounted a much-travelled man lent to his speech a liveliness and a good humour that were otherwise not always at his command. Through a clearing they caught a delightful view of the little town, and saw the glass roof of the pump-room glistening in the evening sun. They decided to rest a while. Karl stretched out at full length in the grass. Sabine sat down on a barked and chopped-off tree. But Doctor Graesler, who did not want to expose his light grey suit to any kind of peril, remained standing and continued to tell of his travels; his voice, usually somewhat husky despite frequent clearings of the throat, seemed to him to have a new, or at least unfamiliar, soft ring, and he found himself listened to with an attention such as he had not for a long time enjoyed. He
