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I was hardly listening. It was the bi-weekly collier from Barry, but she must have had a good passage, because she had saved a tide. Old Penrose, who had had her since the war, had retired a month or so before and the owners had given the command to his nephew, who used to be her mate; a smart young chap who wore a brown bowler hat with his reefer jacket when he came ashore. I wondered if he had taken to forcing her in good weather, and whether she would stand it. Then I came back to earth and Dixon was talking at me still.

He was very earnest. “I don’t know that I’ve ever recommended this before—to anyone. But it’s what you need.”

I eyed him for a minute, and he didn’t like it. “You think so?”

He said: “I think so. Living alone as you do, you’re simply knocking yourself to bits. And you don’t care a damn about it—do you?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know that I do.”

He came and sat down beside my bed again. “Look here, Stevenson,” he said. “I want you to realise that you’re a case to me, and nothing more. This is a matter of business to me. I’m not trying to ferret round among your private affairs; I don’t know anything about them, and I don’t want to. I’m not trying to get at you. All I want to tell you is that, as your medical adviser, I should advise you to get married. I think if you did that, you wouldn’t find yourself in my hands quite so often.”