"Oh, the usual silly sort of thing that can never be carried out," replied Dormer with a weary smile. "If I were a farm labourer and lived out of doors and did not use my brain, I should never have another headache."
"But, seriously, doesn't he think you any better for these weeks at Colyton?"
"Not permanently, if at all." Dormer stirred his coffee. "The worst of it is that I'm almost afraid that he is right in what he says."
"What does he say—beyond the farm labourer idea?" asked Tristram anxiously.
"He says that I cannot think of going back to work this term; that if I do, I shall have a bad breakdown, and it may be years before I am able to write another word."
Tristram's heart sank.
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Well, there isn't much choice for me," responded his friend sighing. "He recommends, I might say he orders, a voyage."
And as Dormer struck Tristram as being extraordinarily submissive to this decree, Tristram was proportionately alarmed. But he concealed this fact, and merely said, "So he recommends a voyage, does he? Where to?"
"The Mediterranean."