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got the scientific temperament.’
‘Well, you can’t go on changing professions.’
‘Oh, no. I’m going to stick to this. I think I shall like it
better when I get into the wards. I have an idea that I’m
more interested in people than in anything else in the
world. And as far as I can see, it’s the only profession in
which you have your freedom. You carry your knowledge in
your head; with a box of instruments and a few drugs you
can make your living anywhere.’
‘Aren’t you going to take a practice then?’
‘Not for a good long time at any rate,’ Philip answered.
‘As soon as I’ve got through my hospital appointments I
shall get a ship; I want to go to the East—the Malay Archi-
pelago, Siam, China, and all that sort of thing—and then I
shall take odd jobs. Something always comes along, cholera
duty in India and things like that. I want to go from place to
place. I want to see the world. The only way a poor man can
do that is by going in for the medical.’
They came to Greenwich then. The noble building of Ini-
go Jones faced the river grandly.
‘I say, look, that must be the place where Poor Jack dived
into the mud for pennies,’ said Philip.
They wandered in the park. Ragged children were play-
ing in it, and it was noisy with their cries: here and there
old seamen were basking in the sun. There was an air of a
hundred years ago.
‘It seems a pity you wasted two years in Paris,’ said Hay-
ward.
‘Waste? Look at the movement of that child, look at

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