“Then a public school is no place for you. I’ve said so from the first. Your people should have listened to me, and sent you on a long sea voyage under the man I recommended, in the ship I told them about. She sails the day after to-morrow, and you should have sailed in her.” The patient made no remark; but he felt as sore as his physician on the subject of that long sea voyage. It would have meant a premature end to his undistinguished schooldays, and goodbye to all thought of following in his brothers’ steps on the field of schoolboy glory. But he might have had adventures beyond the pale of that circumscribed arena, he might have been shipwrecked on a desert island, and lived to tell a tale beyond the dreams of envious athletes, if his people had but taken kindly to the scheme. But they had been so very far from taking to it at all, with the single exception of his only sister, that the boy had not the heart to discuss it now. “If only there were some medicine one could take to stop an attack!” he sighed. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.” “There are plenty of preventives,” returned the doctor. “That’s what we want. Smoking and inhaling all sorts of rubbish is merely a palliative that does more harm than good in the long run.” “But it does you good when the preventives fail. If I could get a good night without smoking I should be thankful.” “If I promise you a good night will you give me your cigarettes to keep until to-morrow?” “If you like.” The doctor wrote a prescription while the boy produced the cardboard box from his bag. “Thank you,” said Bompas, as they made an exchange. “I don’t want you even to be tempted to smoke to-night, because I know what the temptation must be when you can’t get your breath. You will get this prescription made up in two bottles; take the first before you go to bed to-night, and the second if you wake with an attack before five in the morning. You say you are staying the night with friends; better give me the name and let me see if they’re on the telephone before you go. I want you to go to bed early, tell them not to call you in the morning, and come back to me the moment you’ve had your breakfast.” They parted amicably after all, and Pocket went off only wondering whether he ought to have said positively that he was staying with friends when he might be going back to school. But Dr. Bompas had been so short with him at first as to discourage unnecessary explanations; besides, there could be no question of his going back that night. And the difficulty of the morning, which he had quite forgotten in the train, was not allowed to mar a moment of his day in town.