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ey. Mind you, you’ve got a lot to learn, but you’re promising,
I’ll say that for you, you’re promising, and I’ll see that you
get a pound a week as soon as you deserve it.’
Philip wondered how long he would have to wait for that.
Two years?
He was startled at the change in his uncle. When last he
had seen him he was a stout man, who held himself upright,
clean-shaven, with a round, sensual face; but he had fallen
in strangely, his skin was yellow; there were great bags un-
der the eyes, and he was bent and old. He had grown a beard
during his last illness, and he walked very slowly.
‘I ‘m not at my best today,’ he said when Philip, having
just arrived, was sitting with him in the dining-room. ‘The
heat upsets me.’
Philip, asking after the affairs of the parish, looked at
him and wondered how much longer he could last. A hot
summer would finish him; Philip noticed how thin his
hands were; they trembled. It meant so much to Philip. If
he died that summer he could go back to the hospital at
the beginning of the winter session; his heart leaped at the
thought of returning no more to Lynn’s. At dinner the Vicar
sat humped up on his chair, and the housekeeper who had
been with him since his wife’s death said:
‘Shall Mr. Philip carve, sir?’
The old man, who had been about to do so from disin-
clination to confess his weakness, seemed glad at the first
suggestion to relinquish the attempt.
‘You’ve got a very good appetite,’ said Philip.
‘Oh yes, I always eat well. But I’m thinner than when you