Page:How I Cured a Hopeless Paralytic.pdf/1

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USED to think some years ago that I was tolerably proof against most infections, including that of influenza, but I suppose I had got into a "receptive condition," for I had not been long back in my rooms after my last engagement before I began to feel a most unmistakable seediness. My old friend Nosbury, whom I consulted, in a kindly-meant effort to relieve my depression was inclined to put the symptoms down to over-smoking; but when he took my temperature and caught a glimpse of that blankety tongue he sent me to bed straight-away, and there I stayed for a fortnight on end. There was nothing special about the attack; it ran its usual course, but as a result of a month's enforced idleness, to say nothing of the incidental expenses, I found I had made a larger hole in my small capital than I was able to contemplate unmoved. Just in the nick of time, and when I was thinking of spending a few pounds more on a recruiting trip to Brighton, Adamson (that prince of agents!) offered me the charge of a practice in the New Forest, which he described as "small and easy," and I was only too glad to take it, small and easy as the fee might also prove.

When I got down to Rougholt I found that Adamson's expression was not a mere epigram. Dr. Wild was a man of some means, and appeared to practise more for the sake of an occupation than anything else. He was an active member of the Alpine Club, and I barely saw him before he was off to Switzerland for his holiday. Personally, I am of that not inconsiderable class in whom altitudes create a horrid sensation of fear and discomfort, and I was unable to understand why a man who appeared to enjoy so many of the good things of life should risk his neck among the gulls and precipices whose photographs covered the walls of nearly every room in the house. Mrs. Wild, who was an equally expert Alpinist, accompanied her husband, and as they had no family I was left practically master of the house—a state of things in which, judging by past experience, the advantages and disadvantages were about equally balanced.

The work, when I had once got used to it, proved to be so light that I began to look on it as an agreeable opportunity for getting up my strength for more serious work, although, as matters turned out it was by no means a sinecure. But the chief attraction of the place (I may as well say so at once) was that Rougholt lay an easy cycle-ride from Southampton, where I knew Mrs. Innes had taken a house. I had seen very little of the Innes family in town, my wretched illness being responsible for much; but I had seen enough to convince me that Louise was the one woman on earth for me, and it was only the uncertainty of my position which kept me from telling her in