I know."
"Great heavens, man!" I exclaimed. "That's my idea exactly.
In fact, those are my very phrases. How could you have
guessed it?"
He made a gesture with his hand to indicate weariness
and disillusionment.
"Pshaw!" he said. "I know it because I've been doing it.
I've been here a fortnight now on this open-air,
life-in-the-woods game. Well, I'm sick of it! This last
lets me out."
"What last?" I asked.
"Why, meeting you. Do you realize that you are the
nineteenth man that I've met in the last three days
running about naked in the woods? They're all doing it.
The woods are full of them."
"You don't say so!" I gasped.
"Fact. Wherever you go in the bush you find naked men
all working out this same blasted old experiment. Why,
when you get a little farther in you'll see signs up:
NAKED MEN NOT ALLOWED IN THIS BUSH, and NAKED MEN KEEP
OFF, and GENTLEMEN WHO ARE NAKED WILL KINDLY KEEP TO THE
HIGH ROAD, and a lot of things like that. You must have
come in at a wrong place or you'd have noticed the little
shanties that they have now at the edge of the New England
bush with signs up: UNION SUITS BOUGHT AND SOLD, CAMERAS
FOR SALE OR TO RENT, HIGHEST PRICE FOR CAST-OFF CLOTHING,
and all that sort of thing.
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