"What I require, old girl," said Doctor Brink, rising slowly to his feet, "is a job in the City. I want to try a new system of exploitation. My game’s too deadly simple: I’m tired of pumping aniline dye and water into hungry bellies for a thousand a year. I’m tired of the filthy working-man—tired of seeing him so close. He smells of beer, and his hands are so cold. His eyes are awful, and they give me nightmares.... I want to kill the cad more profitably. I want to start a trouser-button works, or some chutney mills, or something. I can’t stand it any longer—this deadly boredom: this watching the dumb beast die." "Well," said Aunt Isobel, "I can seriously recommend you to pin your faith to Anti-Nervo. You take two tablets three times daily." *XX* *MILK* I have long been interested in Mr. Binney. He is the only milkman I have ever seen who looks any different from other milkmen. His very voice is different; for, whereas other milkmen are sudden and shrill of utterance, Mr. Binney has cultivated a profounder, more scholarly method, and he has a voice of deep bass quality. I have sat at an upper window of the Bovingdon Street dispensary and watched this tradesman closely when he has been conducting milkcans to the houses opposite. I have observed his slow, deliberate tread, so thoroughly in keeping with the fulness of his girth and stature. I have noted his extensive face, so plain and wise and red. I have remarked his drooping eyelid and crimson neck, his scant white locks, and row upon row of chins—features insignificant in themselves, but, when combined, imparting to his countenance a strangely judicial character. This effect of power (such is the individuality of the man) receives additional strength even from the trivial business of his calling. Mr. Binney, when handing a milkcan through some parlour window, looks less like a milkman than any other imaginable human thing. He handles the pewter vessel gingerly, daintily, as if it were a precious casket, and a sort of trembling eagerness is sometimes to be observed in his demeanour. There is nothing commercial in Mr. Binney’s manner. He does not seem to sell his milk. He bestows it. To see him gingerly proffering his battered cans is to see, as it were, an earthly Providence—a conscious benefactor, distributing Nature’s bounty to her helpless children. He accepts the copper tokens which reward his ministrations with an air of gracious calm as far removed from any taint of barter as are his actions. You might suppose him to be a priest receiving offertory.