id I, "that it is no use holding on here?"

He jumped up, and began pacing the room in his swift jerky way.

"You take warning from it, Munro," said he. "You've got to start yet.
Take my tip, and go where no one knows you. People will trust a stranger
quick enough; but if they can remember you as a little chap who ran
about in knickerbockers, and got spanked with a hair brush for stealing
plums, they are not going to put their lives in your keeping. It's all
very well to talk about friendship and family connections; but when a
man has a pain in the stomach he doesn't care a toss about all that. I'd
stick it up in gold, letters in every medical class-room--have it carved
across the gate of the University--that if a man wants friends be
must go among strangers. It's all up here, Munro; so there's no use in
advising me to hold on."

I asked him how much he owed. It came to about seven hundred pounds.
The rent alone was two hundred. He had already raised money on the
furniture, and his whole assets came to less than a tenner. Of course,
there was only one possible thing that I could advise.

"You must call your creditors together," said I; "they can see for
themselves that you are young and energetic--sure to succeed sooner or
later. If they push you into a corner now, they can get nothing. Make
that clear to them. But if you make a fresh start elsewhere and succeed,
you may pay them all in full. I see no other possible way out of it."

"I knew that you'd say that, and it's just what I thought myself. Isn't
it, Hetty? Well, then, that settles it; and I am much obliged to you for
your advice, and that's all we'll say about the matter to-night. I've
made my shot and missed. Next time I shall hit, and it won't be long
either."

His failure did not seem to weigh very heavily on his mind, for in a few
minutes he was shouting away as lustily as ever. Whiskey and hot water
were brought in, that we might all drink luck to the second venture.

And this whiskey led us to what might have been a troublesome affair.
Cullingworth, who had drunk off a couple of glasses, waited until his
wife had left the room, and then began to talk of the difficulty of
getting any exercise now that he had to wait in all day in the hope of
patients. This led us round to the ways in which a man might take his
exercise indoors, and that to boxing. Cullingworth took a couple of
pairs of gloves out of a cupboard, and proposed that we should fight a
rou