you, you're
promising, and I'll see that you get a pound a week as soon as you deserve
it."

Philip wondered how long he would have to wait for that. Two years?

He was startled at the change in his uncle. When last he had seen him he
was a stout man, who held himself upright, clean-shaven, with a round,
sensual face; but he had fallen in strangely, his skin was yellow; there
were great bags under the eyes, and he was bent and old. He had grown a
beard during his last illness, and he walked very slowly.

"I'm not at my best today," he said when Philip, having just arrived, was
sitting with him in the dining-room. "The heat upsets me."

Philip, asking after the affairs of the parish, looked at him and wondered
how much longer he could last. A hot summer would finish him; Philip
noticed how thin his hands were; they trembled. It meant so much to
Philip. If he died that summer he could go back to the hospital at the
beginning of the winter session; his heart leaped at the thought of
returning no more to Lynn's. At dinner the Vicar sat humped up on his
chair, and the housekeeper who had been with him since his wife's death
said:

"Shall Mr. Philip carve, sir?"

The old man, who had been about to do so from disinclination to confess
his weakness, seemed glad at the first suggestion to relinquish the
attempt.

"You've got a very good appetite," said Philip.

"Oh yes, I always eat well. But I'm thinner than when you were here last.
I'm glad to be thinner, I didn't like being so fat. Dr. Wigram thinks I'm
all the better for being thinner than I was."

When dinner was over the housekeeper brought him some medicine.

"Show the prescription to Master Philip," he said. "He's a doctor too. I'd
like him to see that he thinks it's all right. I told Dr. Wigram that now
you're studying to be a doctor he ought to make a reduction in his
charges. It's dreadful the bills I've had to pay. He came every day for
two months, and he charges five shillings a visit. It's a lot of money,
isn't it? He comes twice a week still. I'm going to tell him he needn't
come any more. I'll send for him if I want him."

He looked at Philip eagerly while he read the prescriptions. They were
narcotics. There were two of them, and one was a medicine which the Vicar
explained he was to use only if his neuritis grew unendurable.

"I'm very careful," he said. "I don't want to get into the opium habit."

He did not mention his nephew's affairs. Philip