“Of course, the doctor had a large practice before he died, and people used to think he made two and three thousand pounds a year; and Mrs. Tattler-Jones, who knows everything, said our income was £4,000.
“His last year, your father earned £1,800 and got in £1,200; the other £600 will never be paid; and yet he was so pleased because he had cleared off the last penny of his debt, and thought he would begin to lay something aside for your education.”
“But why did he not get the other £600? Could the people not pay?”
“They could pay everybody else—wine merchants, jewellers, and car-owners—but their doctor's bill was left last, and often altogether, and your father would never prosecute.”
“And didn't father attend many people for nothing?”
“No one will ever know how many, for he did not even tell me; he used to say that if he didn't get often to church, he tried to do as people were told to do there; his commandment was the eleventh, 'Love one another.'”
“Did father believe the same as clergymen about things, mater?”
“No, not quite, and I suppose some people would call him a heretic; but you and I know, Jack, that if to do good and to be quite selfless, and to be high-minded, pure, and true, is to be like Christ, then the doctor was a Christian, the best I ever saw.”
“Very likely he was the same sort of heretic as Christ Himself. I say, mater, there will be a good lot to speak up for father some day—widows and orphans and such like. I'm proud to be his son; it's a deal better to have such a father, of whom every person speaks well, than to come in for a pot of money. If old Dodson had a son, how ashamed he would be of his father.”
“Money is not a bad thing, all the same, Jack,” and Mrs. Laycock sighed. “If we had had a little more than the insurance policy, then we would not have had to come to this house, and you would not have been in an office.”