ereavement,
and if then the patient lived on they visited the medical attendant with
the resentment they felt at having tormented themselves before it was
necessary. On the other hand, if you said the patient might live a year
and he died in a week the family said you did not know your business. They
thought of all the affection they would have lavished on the defunct if
they had known the end was so near. Dr. Wigram made the gesture of washing
his hands.

"I don't think there's any grave risk so long as he--remains as he is," he
ventured at last. "But on the other hand, we mustn't forget that he's no
longer a young man, and well, the machine is wearing out. If he gets over
the hot weather I don't see why he shouldn't get on very comfortably till
the winter, and then if the winter does not bother him too much, well, I
don't see why anything should happen."

Philip went back to the dining-room where his uncle was sitting. With his
skull-cap and a crochet shawl over his shoulders he looked grotesque. His
eyes had been fixed on the door, and they rested on Philip's face as he
entered. Philip saw that his uncle had been waiting anxiously for his
return.

"Well, what did he say about me?"

Philip understood suddenly that the old man was frightened of dying. It
made Philip a little ashamed, so that he looked away involuntarily. He was
always embarrassed by the weakness of human nature.

"He says he thinks you're much better," said Philip.

A gleam of delight came into his uncle's eyes.

"I've got a wonderful constitution," he said. "What else did he say?" he
added suspiciously.

Philip smiled.

"He said that if you take care of yourself there's no reason why you
shouldn't live to be a hundred."

"I don't know that I can expect to do that, but I don't see why I
shouldn't see eighty. My mother lived till she was eighty-four."

There was a little table by the side of Mr. Carey's chair, and on it were
a Bible and the large volume of the Common Prayer from which for so many
years he had been accustomed to read to his household. He stretched out
now his shaking hand and took his Bible.

"Those old patriarchs lived to a jolly good old age, didn't they?" he
said, with a queer little laugh in which Philip read a sort of timid
appeal.

The old man clung to life. Yet he believed implicitly all that his
religion taught him. He had no doubt in the immortality of the soul, and
he felt that he had conducted himself well eno