Next morning he was awakened by his friend, boisterous and ruddy from a bath, performing a strange ritual of prostrations and contortions in front of an open window discreetly veiled with fluttering butter-muslin. Edwin lazily watched the sinuous play of muscles under the shaggy limbs of W.G. through half-closed lids. “You’d make a topping subject for dissection, W.G.,” he said. “Hallo!” W.G. answered from between his legs. “You awake, you old slacker? There’s a letter for you that came up with the tea. Tea’s cold, by the way.” “Thanks,” said Edwin, as W.G. skimmed the letter over to him. “Good Lord, it’s from Edmondson’s.” It was a note hastily scribbled advising Edwin to go at once and see Dr. Altrincham-Harris at 563 Lower Sparkdale, North Bromwich, between nine and ten a.m., or six and nine p.m., and signed by the manager who screwed his eyes up. “Five hundred and sixty-three, Lower Sparkdale,” Edwin groaned. “I say, that sounds pretty bad. Altrincham-Harris is rather hot stuff for Lower Sparkdale, isn’t it? Queer place for a double-barreler.” “General practitioner,” said W.G., rubbing himself down with a pair of flesh-gloves. “They all go in for hyphens. It impresses the lower-middle classes. When I go into practice, my son, I shall be known as Dr. William George-Brown, if I can afford the extra letters on a plate.” “Lower Sparkdale’s a pretty awful slum, isn’t it?” “Never been there. It’s time you cleared off to the bathroom. You’ll feel better when you’re awake.” Edwin spent the morning in writing, and four times rewriting, a letter to his father. It was a difficult job, for he felt that the reasons for his departure could not be explained in words, and he was particularly anxious to make it clear that it was purely a matter of temperament and that he didn’t wish it to imply any criticism of Mr. Ingleby’s plans. When he had finished it he found that it was far too late to visit the surgery of Dr. Altrincham-Harris. He therefore waited till the evening, and then took a steam-tram through a succession of sordid streets, past the public abattoirs and the newly-opened Rowton House, to the level of 563 Lower Sparkdale. The extreme end of that street was not as bad as he had imagined it might be, for at this point the slum ended, resolving itself into the edge of a growing suburb of red-brick. Number 563 was a corner house secretively curtained with dirty muslin on flat brass rods. A shining plate revealed the qualifications, such as they were, of C. Altrincham-Harris, Physician and Surgeon, and as the front door seemed to have sunk into a state of disuse, Edwin entered at another, marked “Surgery,” round which a number of poorly-clad women, some of them carrying babies, were clustered.