"That type won't strain anybody's eyes," Mr. Earlforward commented on the Gray as it disappeared within brown paper.
"No."
"I'm thankful to say my eyesight doesn't give me any trouble now."
"Um!" said the doctor, gazing at the bookseller, and taking the chance to feel his way towards the matter which had brought him into the shop. "I shouldn't say you were looking quite the man you were when I saw you last."
"No, he is not!" Violet put in eagerly.
"Oh! I'm all right," Mr. Earlforward, defending himself against yet another example of the doctor's impudence. "All I want is more exercise, and I can't get that because of my knee, you know."
"Yes," said the doctor. "I've always noticed you limp. You ought to go to Barker. I shouldn't be surprised if he could put you right in ten minutes. Not a qualified man, of course; but wonderful cures!... You might never limp again."
"But he charges very heavy, doesn't he? I've heard of fifty pounds."
"I don't know. Supposing he does? Well worth it, isn't it, to be cured? What's money?"
Mr. Earlforward made no reply to this silly question. Fifty pounds, or anything like it, for just pulling your knee about! "What was money," indeed! He seized the money on the table. The doctor understood himself to have been definitely repulsed. Being a philosopher, he felt resigned. He had done what he could at an expense of twenty-five shillings. He lodged one of the parcels under his left arm and he took the other in his left hand and assumed a demeanour, compulsory in a gentleman, to indicate to the world that the parcels were entirely without weight, and that he was carrying them out of caprice and not from necessity.