to do. If we go on prescribing mist:
alb: he'll lose his cunning."

The students laughed, and the doctor gave them a circular glance of
enjoyment in his joke. Then he touched the bell and, when the porter poked
his head in, said:

"Old women, please."

He leaned back in his chair, chatting with the H.P. while the porter
herded along the old patients. They came in, strings of anaemic girls,
with large fringes and pallid lips, who could not digest their bad,
insufficient food; old ladies, fat and thin, aged prematurely by frequent
confinements, with winter coughs; women with this, that, and the other,
the matter with them. Dr. Tyrell and his house-physician got through them
quickly. Time was getting on, and the air in the small room was growing
more sickly. The physician looked at his watch.

"Are there many new women today?" he asked.

"A good few, I think," said the H.P.

"We'd better have them in. You can go on with the old ones."

They entered. With the men the most common ailments were due to the
excessive use of alcohol, but with the women they were due to defective
nourishment. By about six o'clock they were finished. Philip, exhausted by
standing all the time, by the bad air, and by the attention he had given,
strolled over with his fellow-clerks to the Medical School to have tea. He
found the work of absorbing interest. There was humanity there in the
rough, the materials the artist worked on; and Philip felt a curious
thrill when it occurred to him that he was in the position of the artist
and the patients were like clay in his hands. He remembered with an amused
shrug of the shoulders his life in Paris, absorbed in colour, tone,
values, Heaven knows what, with the aim of producing beautiful things: the
directness of contact with men and women gave a thrill of power which he
had never known. He found an endless excitement in looking at their faces
and hearing them speak; they came in each with his peculiarity, some
shuffling uncouthly, some with a little trip, others with heavy, slow
tread, some shyly. Often you could guess their trades by the look of them.
You learnt in what way to put your questions so that they should be
understood, you discovered on what subjects nearly all lied, and by what
inquiries you could extort the truth notwithstanding. You saw the
different way people took the same things. The diagnosis of dangerous
illness would be accepted by one with a laugh and a joke, by another with
d