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a more ordinary boot and to limp less. He remembered how
passionately he had prayed for the miracle which his uncle
had assured him was possible to omnipotence. He smiled
ruefully.
‘I was rather a simple soul in those days,’ he thought.
Towards the end of February it was clear that Cronshaw
was growing much worse. He was no longer able to get up.
He lay in bed, insisting that the window should be closed
always, and refused to see a doctor; he would take little
nourishment, but demanded whiskey and cigarettes: Philip
knew that he should have neither, but Cronshaw’s argument
was unanswerable.
‘I daresay they are killing me. I don’t care. You’ve warned
me, you’ve done all that was necessary: I ignore your warn-
ing. Give me something to drink and be damned to you.’
Leonard Upjohn blew in two or three times a week, and
there was something of the dead leaf in his appearance
which made the word exactly descriptive of the manner
of his appearance. He was a weedy-looking fellow of five-
and-thirty, with long pale hair and a white face; he had the
look of a man who lived too little in the open air. He wore a
hat like a dissenting minister’s. Philip disliked him for his
patronising manner and was bored by his fluent conversa-
tion. Leonard Upjohn liked to hear himself talk. He was
not sensitive to the interest of his listeners, which is the first
requisite of the good talker; and he never realised that he
was telling people what they knew already. With measured
words he told Philip what to think of Rodin, Albert Samain,
and Caesar Franck. Philip’s charwoman only came in for an