"The health of the place is your highest tribute surely."
"Not at all—far from it. I've nothing to do with the matter. Drugs decaying in their vases; steel rusting in its velvet. Besides, the loneliness. A fishing-rod is but a vain thing to save a man—especially when it's close time as now; and the new people at Godleigh haven't asked me to a single shoot. In fact there's to be no shooting this year at all. So my case is desperate."
"Come and see us oftener," said Mark.
"I will; I positively must; but I think I'll go abroad. There's a saying that a man who can live quite happily alone must be one of two things: an angel, or a demon. Now I'm neither to my knowledge, and since Christo has vanished I've lived alone, and it's telling on me. I shall drift into one of those extremes, and I leave you to guess which."
"But you're always welcome everywhere, my dear Clack."
"I know it—at least I think so; but there's such fear of wearing out a welcome in a small place. Hereditary modesty, you'll say. If so, it's on the mother's side, not the father's. But, in all seriousness, why should not I join him?"
"You know your own business best. Is there money to be made there?"
"Plenty for a professional man. They are to have a qualification of their own, I believe; but at present a practitioner with English degrees gets the pull—very right and proper of course. Thus the old country drives her sons away; but not before she's arranged ample accommodation for them elsewhere—God bless her! So I'm wise to go—eh?"
"Nothing like seeing the ends of the earth and enlarging the mind," said Mark.
"Well, don't any of you develop anything in the nature of an interesting indisposition to tempt me to stop."