“‘There’s no reason,’ the doctor would say, ‘why you shouldn’t make a good chemist in time.’ Of course that seemed a very small thing to me; and yet . . . think what I might have been! I was sixteen, just your own age, Eddie, when he died. Of course he killed himself, as many doctors do, with work. People make a great fuss when a missionary in some outlandish country lays down his life, as they call it, for his flock. But country doctors are doing that every month in the year all over England—I don’t mean the social successes in Harley Street—and from what I’ve seen of it their widows can’t count on much gratitude. “It was a hard winter . . . the year eighteen sixty-seven . . . and there happened to be a great deal of illness in the hills. We were worked pretty hard, both of us, but the doctor had no chance of taking a rest: he was the only medical man living within ten miles: and in the end he, too, caught a heavy cold, and had to go on working through it. In the end he had to give up. It was pneumonia; and the last thing he did was to write a letter asking a consultant in Bristol to come down and see him. He was a kindly man, but I suppose Dr. Marshall was to him only a case. The old fellow refused to have any one but me to nurse him. ‘John and I understand each other,’ he said. “It was a terrible battle: to see a great strong man like that fighting for breath. They didn’t give oxygen in those days. It went on for four days and on the fifth, or rather in the middle of the night—he called to me faintly, and I found him lying on his back breathing more softly, very pale and drenched with sweat. ‘This is the crisis . . . fifth day . . .’ he said. He told me to cover him with all the blankets I could find, to give him some brandy, and to take his temperature. It was a funny job for a boy. I had never seen a great man suddenly go weak like that. His temperature had fallen below normal. ‘Ah . . .’ he said. ‘I thought so. . . . Brandy. . .’ “But he couldn’t take it himself. ‘You’ve got to be the doctor now, John,’ he said. There wasn’t any more fight left in him. All that day he hardly spoke at all, but at night he called me to his side and told me to make a bonfire of all the books and the bills we’d been making out the week before. ‘I shan’t want any more money,’ he said. ‘But you will . . . a little. . . . I’ve seen to that. You’re a good lad. Don’t aim too high. And don’t think too much about money. Money is the root of all evil. . .’ “I scarcely took any notice of what he said. I only knew that I was going to lose the only friend I had. He died early next morning, and I was just like a dog: I couldn’t bring myself to leave him.