"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 to go, of course, but I shall probably have to decide where in order to save my mind. But it will certainly be somewhere, so I might as well be packing my trunks."
"And you will be away indefinitely, I suppose?"
"Yes, I imagine so."