Long but not dreary weeks followed one after the other.  In the little ’dobe cottage, situated far up the hill on the mesa, Carol and David lived a life of passionless routine.  Carol was busy, hence she had the easier part.  David’s breakfast on a tray at seven, nourishment at nine, luncheon at twelve, nourishment at three, dinner at six, nourishment at nine,—­with medicines to be administered, temperatures to be taken, alcohol rubs to be given at frequent intervals,—­this was Carol’s day.  And at odd hours the house must be kept clean and sanitary, dishes washed, letters written.  And whenever the moment came, David was waiting for her to come and read aloud to him.

When a man of action, of energy, of boundless enthusiasm is tossed aside, strapped with iron bands to a little white cot on a screened porch with a view of a sunburned mesa reaching off to the mountains, unless he is of the biggest, and finest, his personality can not survive.  David’s did.  Months of helplessness lay behind him, a life of inaction lay before him.  He could walk a half block or so, he could go driving with kind neighbors who invited him, but every avenue of service was closed, every form of expression denied him.  He had hoped to live a full, good, glowing life.  And there he lay.

It is not work which tells the caliber of man, but idleness.

Month followed month, now there were bitter winds and blinding snows, now the hot sun scorched the yellow sand of the mesa, now the mountains were high white clouds of snow, now the fields of green alfalfa showed on a few distant foothills, and the canyons were green with pines.  Otherwise there was no change.

But the summers in New Mexico were crushingly, killingly hot, and so the sturdy-hearted health chasers left the ’dobe cottage, packed their few possessions and moved up into Colorado.  And while David waited patiently in the hotel, Carol set forth alone and found a small cottage with sleeping porch, cleanly and nicely furnished, rent reasonable, no objections to health seekers.  And she and David moved into their new home.

And the old life of Albuquerque began again, meals, nourishments and medicines alternating through the days.

In the summer of the third year, Carol wrote to Connie: 

“Haven’t you been saving up long enough?  We do so want to see you, and Colorado is beautiful.  We haven’t the long mesa stretching up to the sunny slopes as it was in New Mexico, but from our tiny cottage we can look right over the city to the mountains on the other side, and the sunny slopes are there.  So please count your pennies.  They give summer rates you know.”

Connie went down to Mount Mark the night she received that letter, spending half the night in the train, and talked it over with the family.  Without a dissenting voice, they said she ought to go.  Ten days later, Carol and David were exulting over Connie’s letter.