eave Cullingworth at once. Then within a couple
of posts I had to write again and announce that my departure was
indefinitely postponed, and that I was actually doing his whole
practice. Well, the dear old lady was very angry. I don't suppose she
quite understood how temporary the necessity was, and how impossible it
would have been to leave Cullingworth in the lurch. She was silent for
nearly three weeks, and then she wrote a very stinging letter (and she
handles her adjectives most deftly when she likes). She went so far
as to say that Cullingworth was a "bankrupt swindler," and that I had
dragged the family honour in the dirt by my prolonged association
with him. This letter came on the morning of the very last day that my
patient was confined to the house. When I returned from work I found him
sitting in his dressing-gown downstairs. His wife, who had driven home,
was beside him. To my surprise, when I congratulated him on being
fit for work again, his manner (which had been most genial during his
illness) was as ungracious as before our last explanation. His wife,
too, seemed to avoid my eye, and cocked her chin at me when she spoke.

"Yes, I'll take it over to-morrow," said he. "What do I owe you for
looking after it?"

"Oh, it was all in the day's work," said I.

"Thank you, I had rather have strict business," he answered. "You know
where you are then, but a favour is a thing with no end to it. What
d'you put it at?"

"I never thought about it in that light."

"Well, think about it now. A locum would have cost me four guineas a
week. Four fours sixteen. Make it twenty. Well, I promised to allow you
a pound a week, and you were to pay it back. I'll put twenty pounds to
your credit account, and you'll have it every week as sure as Saturday."

"Thank you," said I. "If you are so anxious to make a business matter
of it, you can arrange it so." I could not make out, and cannot make out
now, what had happened to freeze them up so; but I supposed that they
had been talking it over, and came to the conclusion that I was settling
down too much upon the old lines, and that they must remind me that I
was under orders to quit. They might have done it with more tact.

To cut a long story short, on the very day that Cullingworth was able to
resume his work I started off for Stockwell, taking with me only a bag,
for it was merely a prospecting expedition, and I intended to return for
my luggage if I saw reason for hope