"
"You have given up Bradfield altogether then?"
"Too provincial, my boy! What's the good of a
village practice with a miserable three thousand or so a
year for a man that wants room to spread? My head was
sticking out at one end of Bradfield and my feet at the
other. Why, there wasn't room for Hetty in the place,
let alone me! I've taken to the eye, my boy. There's a
fortune in the eye. A man grudges a half-crown to cure
his chest or his throat, but he'd spend his last dollar
over his eye. There's money in ears, but the eye is a
gold mine."
"What!" said I, "in South America?"
"Just exactly in South America," he cried, pacing
with his quick little steps up and down the dingy room.
"Look here, laddie! There's a great continent from the
equator to the icebergs, and not a man in it who could
correct an astigmatism. What do they know of modern eye-
surgery and refraction? Why, dammy, they don't know much
about it in the provinces of England yet, let alone
Brazil. Man, if you could only see it, there's a fringe
of squinting millionaires sitting ten deep round the
whole continent with their money in their hands
waiting for an oculist. Eh, Munro, what? By Crums, I'll
come back and I'll buy Bradfield, and I'll give it away
as a tip to a waiter."
"You propose to settle in some large city, then?"
"City! What use would a city be to me? I'm there to
squeeze the continent.
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