inland. Sailing masters of yachts, off duty, sat and yawned at
the windows; lazy fishermen looked wearily at the weather over
their garden gates; and superfluous coastguards gathered together
in a wooden observatory, and leveled useless telescopes at an
empty sea. The flat open country, with its few dwarf trees and
its mangy hedges, lay prostrate under the sky in all the
desolation of solitary space, and left the famous restorative air
free to build up dilapidated nerves, without an object to hinder
its passage at any point of the compass. The lonely drab-colored
road that led to the nearest town offered to visitors, taking
airings, a view of a low brown object in the distance, said to be
the convent in which the Nuns lived, secluded from mortal eyes.
At one side of the hotel, the windows looked on a little wooden
pier, sadly in want of repair. On the other side, a walled
inclosure accommodated yachts of light tonnage, stripped of their
rigging, and sitting solitary on a bank of mud until their owners
wanted them. In this neighborhood there was a small outlying colony
of shops: one that sold fruit and fish; one that dealt in groceries
and tobacco; one shut up, with a bill in the window inviting a
tenant; and one, behind the Methodist Chapel, answering the
double purpose of a post-office and a storehouse for ropes and
coals. Beyond these objects there was nothing (and this was the
great charm of the place) to distract the attention of invalids,
following the doctor's directions, and from morning to night
taking care of their health.



The time was evening; the scene was one of the private
sitting-rooms in the hotel; and the purpose in view was a little