d, and seemed to be as sanguine and as full of spirits as ever.

"Sound as a trout, my boy!" he cried, drumming on his chest with his
hands. "Played for the London Scottish in their opening match last
week, and was on the ball from whistle to whistle. Not so quick on a
sprint--you find that yourself, Munro, eh what?--but a good hard-working
bullocky forward. Last match I shall have for many a day, for I am off
to South America next week."

"You have given up Bradfield altogether then?"

"Too provincial, my boy! What's the good of a village practice with
a miserable three thousand or so a year for a man that wants room to
spread? My head was sticking out at one end of Bradfield and my feet at
the other. Why, there wasn't room for Hetty in the place, let alone
me! I've taken to the eye, my boy. There's a fortune in the eye. A man
grudges a half-crown to cure his chest or his throat, but he'd spend his
last dollar over his eye. There's money in ears, but the eye is a gold
mine."

"What!" said I, "in South America?"

"Just exactly in South America," he cried, pacing with his quick little
steps up and down the dingy room. "Look here, laddie! There's a great
continent from the equator to the icebergs, and not a man in it who
could correct an astigmatism. What do they know of modern eye-surgery
and refraction? Why, dammy, they don't know much about it in the
provinces of England yet, let alone Brazil. Man, if you could only see
it, there's a fringe of squinting millionaires sitting ten deep round
the whole continent with their money in their hands waiting for
an oculist. Eh, Munro, what? By Crums, I'll come back and I'll buy
Bradfield, and I'll give it away as a tip to a waiter."

"You propose to settle in some large city, then?"

"City! What use would a city be to me? I'm there to squeeze the
continent. I work a town at a time. I send on an agent to the next to
say that I am coming. I 'Here's the chance of a lifetime,' says he,
'no need to go back to Europe. Here's Europe come to you. Squints,
cataracts, iritis, refractions, what you like; here's the great Signor
Cullingworth, right up to date and ready for anything!' In they come of
course, droves of them, and then I arrive and take the money. Here's
my luggage!" he pointed to two great hampers in the corner of the room.
"Those are glasses, my boy, concave and convex, hundreds of them. I test
an eye, fit him on the spot, and send him away shouting. Then I load
up a s