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already something of the professional manner; their career
is mapped out: as soon as they are qualified they propose to
apply for a hospital appointment, after holding which (and
perhaps a trip to the Far East as a ship’s doctor), they will
join their father and spend the rest of their days in a coun-
try practice. One or two are marked out as exceptionally
brilliant: they will take the various prizes and scholarships
which are open each year to the deserving, get one appoint-
ment after another at the hospital, go on the staff, take a
consulting-room in Harley Street, and, specialising in one
subject or another, become prosperous, eminent, and ti-
tled.
The medical profession is the only one which a man
may enter at any age with some chance of making a living.
Among the men of Philip’s year were three or four who were
past their first youth: one had been in the Navy, from which
according to report he had been dismissed for drunkenness;
he was a man of thirty, with a red face, a brusque manner,
and a loud voice. Another was a married man with two chil-
dren, who had lost money through a defaulting solicitor; he
had a bowed look as if the world were too much for him; he
went about his work silently, and it was plain that he found
it difficult at his age to commit facts to memory. His mind
worked slowly. His effort at application was painful to see.
Philip made himself at home in his tiny rooms. He ar-
ranged his books and hung on the walls such pictures and
sketches as he possessed. Above him, on the drawing-room
floor, lived a fifth-year man called Griffiths; but Philip saw
little of him, partly because he was occupied chiefly in the

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