The same impulse stirs my boys, even though they have all outdoors around them. They have suddenly left their house toys and outdoor games alike to fairly burrow in the soil. The heap of beach sand and pebbles that was carted from the shore and left under an old shed for their amusement, has lost its charm. They go across the road and claw the fresh earth from an exposed bank, using fingers instead of their little rakes and spades, and decorate the moist brown "pies" they make with dandelion ornaments. A few days ago the Vanderveer boy came down to play with them, accompanied by an English head nurse of tyrannical mien, and an assortment of coats and wraps. The poor little chap had been ailing half the winter, it seems, with indigestion and various aches, until the doctor told his mother that she must take him to the country and try a change, as he feared the trouble was chronic appendicitis; so the entire establishment has arrived to stay until the Newport season, and the boy's every movement is watched, weighed, and discussed. The nurse, having tucked him up in a big chair in the sun on the porch, with the boys for company, and in charge of father, who was looking at him with a pitying and critical medical eye, said she would leave him for half an hour while she went up the lane to see Martha Corkle. A few moments after, as I glanced across the road, I saw my boys burrowing away at their dirt bank, and their guest with them. I flew downstairs to call him in, fearing for the consequences, but father, who was watching the proceedings from the porch, laid a detaining hand upon me, saying: "His mother has consulted me about the child, and really sent him down here that I may look him over, and I am doing it, in my own fashion. I've no idea the trouble is appendicitis, though it might be driven that way. I read it as a plain case of suppressed boyhood. "He doesn't know how to play, or run naturally without falling; he's afraid to sit down in the dirt--no wonder with those starched linen clothes; and he keeps looking about for the nurse, first over one shoulder and then over the other, like a hunted thing. Evidently they have weighed his food, measured his exercise, and bought his amusements; his only free will and vent is to get in a temper. They give him no chance to sweat off his irritation, only to fume; while that shaking, snorting teakettle of an automobile they bowl him about in, puts the final touch to his nervousness."