“I expect it all sounds to you like a rotten waste of time, mucking about with my life like this,” he said. “But you know I’m not at all sorry I’ve had it. . . . I didn’t take up this doctoring business in a hurry, without thinking about it. I thrashed the matter out; and I came to the conclusion that doctoring’s a good human sort of game: it’s a sort of chance of pulling people out of the rotten messes of one kind or another that they get themselves into—through no fault of their own, poor devils, just because they’re made like you and me and the rest of us. If you go on the bust, or knock about the country with a football team on tour, or go on the tramp and sleep in a hedge or a barn or a Rowton House, as I did when I had the last flare-up with the old man, you rub against a lot of people. They’re all just the same as yourself, you know. You can see yourself in the best of them as well as the worst; and, taking them all round, they’re all damned good at the bottom. They’ve all got to fight out their own way in life with their heads or their fists or their feet. And the only chap that can really help them in it is a doctor. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. God! . . . you’ll scarcely believe it, but once I was converted. I know it’s damn funny; but it’s a fact that when I was a youngster and had been on the periodical bust a revivalist chap got hold of me and persuaded me that I was saved. It’s a funny sort of feeling, I can tell you. I thought I was going off my nut until I went to see a doctor and he put my liver right. It’s a fine humane game, Ingleby. You can take it from me. . . . But I can tell you, with one thing and another, I’ve got my work cut out.” He shook his head seriously, and the puzzled, dogged expression of frustrate determination that Edwin knew so well came into his eyes. “We’re wasting time, my son,” he said. “Let’s get on with the blasted humerus. Now, what is the origin of the Supinator Longus? Come on . . .”