“I think I shall be able to manage,” said Edwin, who was not anxious to commit himself.
“You’d better come and see your room.”
It was a bare bedroom on the first floor with iron bedstead and a dejected washhand-stand, but it seemed to Edwin that, at least, it would be quiet and free from distractions. “I shall be able to read here,” he thought, “and after all, it’s only for twelve months.”
“Not much to look at,” said Dr. Harris apologetically. “I’ll send you down some bedding to-night. I’ll expect you for breakfast at eight o’clock sharp. You’d better come along and have some supper now.”
“I think I’d better go and collect some of my things. I’ve been staying with a friend in his diggings.”
“All right. As you like,” said Dr. Harris. “Nine o’clock sharp to-morrow morning then? You have to be punctual if you’re to make money in this business.”
Edwin said good-night, keeping the key of the surgery. When the doctor had gone he went back into the curtained dispensary and tried to introduce a little order into the waste. A strange life, he thought . . . a strange and degrading life. If this were general practice, he wondered why he had ever despised his father’s trade, for surely there was more dignity in selling tooth-brushes than in dealing so casually with the diseases of human beings. “I must talk it over with old W.G.,” he thought. “He’s a sound man.” But he knew at the bottom of his heart that he couldn’t afford to speculate on the ethics of the case. All that mattered to him, for the present, was the necessity of finding a roof—any roof to shelter him and food to keep him alive. He was a beggar, and could not choose, and had every reason to be thankful for this or any solution of his difficulties.
“It sounds bad,” said W.G., when Edwin had expanded on the refinements of Dr. Harris’s medicine, “but, in a way, you’re lucky to have fallen on your feet so quickly. As a matter of fact, you don’t deserve it. You’re an old fool to have left home, you know. Now, there’s some chance of your appreciating how comfortable you were.”
Boyce was more sympathetic, entering with great pains and seriousness into the cause of Edwin’s spiritual nausea. The results of it pleased him in so far as they meant that in future Edwin would be living in North Bromwich, and promised a perpetuation of the delightful comradeship that they had enjoyed in the summer. “I expect we shall see a lot of you, old boy,” he said, “ambrosial evenings, you know.”
Edwin laughed. “The evenings won’t be exactly ambrosial. I shall be earning my two pounds a month filling eight-ounce bottles with rubbish at a shilling each. I shall feel like compounding in a felony. It’s the devil . . .”