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“I had some work to do,” I said. “That might have happened to anyone.”

“The point is, that it doesn’t. Then, before that, you got water on the knee—not very serious, but you neglected it; and it’s only the mercy of Providence that you’re not lame yet. Frankly, at the time, I thought that it was becoming chronic.”

He paused. “Do you know that you’ve been in my hands six times in the last two years? And it’s only for want of a little care.”

I hadn’t much to say that was worth saying. “I’ve been a pretty good source of income to you, taking it by and large,” I said. “As good as half a dozen old ladies. You don’t want me to mend my ways?”

I must have stung him up, somehow. “Well,” he said drily, “I want you to go on being a source of income to me, anyway.”

There was a little silence.

“I see,” I said. “You think I’m a bad life.”

He thought about it for a moment. “No, I don’t. I didn’t like that pleurisy at all. You’ve not got the resistance that you ought to have, but that’s the infection you picked up in the war. But if you take care of yourself, I see no reason at all why you shouldn’t live to be seventy or eighty.”