Four fours sixteen. Make it
twenty. Well, I promised to allow you a pound a week,
and you were to pay it back. I'll put twenty pounds to
your credit account, and you'll have it every week as
sure as Saturday."
"Thank you," said I. "If you are so anxious to make
a business matter of it, you can arrange it so." I could
not make out, and cannot make out now, what had happened
to freeze them up so; but I supposed that they had been
talking it over, and came to the conclusion that I was
settling down too much upon the old lines, and that they
must remind me that I was under orders to quit. They
might have done it with more tact.
To cut a long story short, on the very day that
Cullingworth was able to resume his work I started off
for Stockwell, taking with me only a bag, for it was
merely a prospecting expedition, and I intended to return
for my luggage if I saw reason for hope. Alas!
there was not the faintest. The sight of the place would
have damped the most sanguine man that ever lived. It is
one of those picturesque little English towns with a
history and little else. A Roman trench and a Norman
keep are its principal products. But to me the most
amazing thing about it was the cloud of doctors which had
settled upon it. A double row of brass plates flanked
the principal street. Where their patients came from I
could not imagine, unless they practised upon each other.
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