"That’s true, madam," assented the doctor. "A cry of suffering which emanated from a bank. As for the pay question, I may assure you that I attach the very greatest importance to their sixpences. You see, there is a clear profit—medicine and bottle included—of fivepence farthing on every one of them, even the most unpleasant. I am saving up, you know, to buy a property—some pleasantly situated place in Scotland with a trout-stream. I have lived on animals all my life, and I want to try fish for a change." "You are making fun of me, Doctor," demurred the lady. "Really," protested Doctor Brink, "I was never more serious in my life. I am saving money here at the rate of six hundred a year, and living well into the bargain. Which reminds me to apologise for keeping my foot up in your presence. I’ve got gout rather badly—the result of Burgundy. I drink a good brand, but I drink it to excess. Suffering humanity pays for that, you know. The silly idiots crowd in here by the hundred, bringing bottles which I fill with a weak solution of picric-acid and water. For this service they pay me sixpence and go away, believing themselves cured. It is one of the simplest methods of acquiring trout-streams which has ever been invented." "I don’t believe you, Doctor," asserted the lady. "Men like you, if money is their only thought, can get it by easier means than coming out here to rob the poor poor." "I could rob the poor in a pleasanter neighbourhood, of course," admitted Doctor Brink. "But then, you see, the living here is cheap—one economises even on the Burgundy—and I’m saving up to buy a trout-stream." "At any rate," protested Mrs. Strudwicke-Moses, "you like the dear creatures and feel sorry for their unfortunate poverty. Now don’t you, Doctor?" "Are you suggesting, madam, that I pity the poor?" "Of course you do," cried Mrs. Strudwicke-Moses. My friend, with an effort, sat up on his couch. "My dear lady," he said, "I am a thoughtful and unusually intelligent man of forty, and the only thing which I have ever pitied in all my life was a parrot in a cage. But as for these hungry and verminous creatures who are saving up for my trout-stream, I have never ceased to hate and despise them." "But why?" exclaimed the Hon. Mrs. Strudwicke-Moses, who, by this time, was seriously alarmed. "For the same reason which causes you to despise them," explained the doctor. "But," protested Mrs. Strudwicke-Moses, "I love the dear things! They are so unfortunate." "I believe," declared the doctor, "that our feeling is identical; but, even to oblige a lady, I cannot call it love. "When," he continued, "a large number of stout men are pleased to starve and shiver for no other reason than that I desire a trout-stream, I consider them to be worthy neither of love nor pity. I consider them to deserve what may be termed a helping foot, and when they have paid for my trout-stream I shall jolly well see that they get it."