Then Uncle Preston suggested that either Harry or Francis or both should train for the medical profession. There was a flourishing practice waiting for them, which could be managed by a reliable locum while they were training; and they could live at the Surgery. This would be the obvious thing to do, said Uncle Preston.

‘Oh, I say,’ said Harry mildly, ‘I don’t think we should like that at all, you know – god, no.’

‘Why not, my dear boy? A most interesting profession, and there is the house all ready for you. It is surely the obvious plan.’

‘I don’t think the old Deedle and I want to be doctors. It would be such a grind. And the old Deedle loathes the Surgery. So does Sophia. They don’t ever want to see it again. It’s a tatty sort of hole, you know.’

‘It could be redecorated and refurnished.’

‘Wouldn’t make any difference.’

Uncle Preston put forward sensible arguments, refusing to admit that such painful things had taken place in the Surgery that no person with any sensitiveness or memory could wish to live there. He would not talk about this. He deplored the life of his dead brother, but always refused to discuss it or to admit to anyone that it had been anything worse than ‘sad.’ And perhaps his verdict was just.

But Harry, with the obstinacy which gentle people alone can command, refused even to think about being a doctor.

He said that diseases, blood and death not only made him feel sick; they bored him. The Deedle was bored by them too. So was Sophia. All three of them only wished to forget the house in which they and their mother and father had been wretched, and to sell the practice upon whose earnings they had lived; and the elders at last had to let him have his way. They hoped that he would change his mind later.

Harry was not depressed by the uncertainty of his prospects. He appeared to think that money would fall from some comfortable source. This source, had Mr Marriot but known it, was Mr Marriot. At least, Harry saw it as Mr Marriot for the next few months, and after that, he imagined they would sell the practice, or that something would turn up.

It was arranged that Mr Marriot should deal with the firm of agents who were to try and sell the practice, and act for Harry.

The problem of Francis was then discussed. Harry was able to tell them with authority that Francis did not want to stay on at school and matriculate, because Francis had told him so during their talk in the bathroom on the Sunday evening following the reading of the will.

As for Francis’s wanting to go into Graby & Bryant’s, he could not say. He thought that it would be quite a good idea if old Francis didn’t mind being stuffed up in an office all day. Upon hearing this, Uncle Preston and Mr Marriot both said, in a kind of Greek chorus, that it was not a question of what Francis wanted; it was a question of what Francis would be exceedingly lucky if he got. Did Harry know how many boys would be leaving school at the end of the term, and how small a proportion of the number would be able to find posts? ‘Posts,’ said Mr Marriot, pushing out his lips over the ‘p’ as though he saw so many thousands of lucky boys safely tied up to solid, newly painted little white wooden ones.