Читать книгу Four Afoot: Being the Adventures of the Big Four on the Highway онлайн

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Perhaps you have met these boys before, when, at Camp Chicora, last summer, they gained the title of the Big Four. If so, you are undoubtedly wondering how it happens that we find them on this bright morning in early September swinging along a country road on Long Island. Well, it was all Dan’s fault. Dan took it into his head to get sick in early summer. As he had never been sick before to amount to anything, he thought he might as well do the thing right. So he had typhoid fever. That was in June, just after school closed, and he spent the succeeding two months at home. He didn’t have a good time, and even when the doctor declared him well, Dan felt, as he himself expressed it, like a last summer’s straw hat. So there was a family council. Dan’s mother said Dan ought to stay out of school and go abroad. Dan said, “Nonsense.” So the matter was left to the physician. He said what Dan needed was outdoor exercise, plenty of fresh air, and all that.

“Let him get into an old suit of clothes,” said the doctor, “and take a walking trip.” (You see, the doctor was a bit old-fashioned.) “Nothing like walking; sea trips and sanitariums aren’t half as good. He needn’t hurry; just let him wander around country for two or three weeks; that’ll set him up, you see if it doesn’t.”