Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/19

 

T was a broiling afternoon of mid-August in Brinoë and everybody who was anybody had long ago quit its burning pavements and chilly palaces for the mountains or the sea. Left behind there were only stray bands of sweating tourists and a few such remnants of the permanent colony as Mrs. Weatherby and the mysterious companion whom no one had ever met; old Mrs. Whitehead, Mr. Binnop, the curate of the English church, the usual Marchesas and Contessas, thick as flies, and Mr. Augustus John Winnery. Except Mrs. Weatherby all these stayed in baking Brinoë for the same reason. (The old Contessa Salverini put up her shutters and lived in the back of her house, giving out word that she had gone to Montecatini for the cure, and receiving all her letters by arrangement with the poste restante of Montecatini.) None of them would have given you the real reason. They stayed because they could not leave their beloved Brinoë or because they were engaged in some work of an archæological or literary nature which forced them to remain. The real reason was that they were all too poor to leave.

In the case of Mr. Winnery, he could not leave