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don’t like giving this sort of advice at all. I was afraid that you might think it a considerable impertinence.”
    “Not at all,” I murmured. “Who do you suggest that I should get?”
    He smiled. “Anyone you like. There are any number of nice girls about who’d be only too glad to get married to a man of your position and your means. You won’t have any difficulty in that way.”
    “Yes,” I said quietly. “I’ve got the money. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”
    He hesitated. “It goes a long way,” he said.
    I agreed. “It does. I can pay for anything I want. You produce the medicine, and I’ll pay for it all right.”
    He laughed. “I’m a doctor—not a matrimonial agency. I can’t go chasing round the country finding girls for you to marry. But I can promise you, you won’t have any difficulty. Any girl would marry you. You must realise that you’re a very eligible man.”
    There was a little silence then. Dixon was right, of course, in what he said; I had realised it myself five years before. A man who lives entirely without women has only two alternatives as the years go on. He gets self-centred and dirty, or he dies.
    I laughed. “All right,” I said at last, “I’ll have Irene. I suppose she’ll do as well as anyone. You might tell her when you go home. You’d better send her up to me this afternoon.”
    I forgot all that he said to that, nor am I sure that I should write it down if I could remember it; he was very deeply hurt.His wife was dead and he had only the one daughter, and a son who was abroad. I had known the girl for some years by sight; I had watched her grow from a gawky schoolgirl into a plump and homely young woman who kept house admirably for her father, performed indifferently on the tennis courts, rode a bicycle about the town, and read some woman’s paper from cover to cover every week. A most estimable young woman and as dull as ditchwater, but he thought the world of her.
    He went away, very grieved and hurt. On reflection I thought that he might see a certain element of humour in the situation, but when he came again he was cold and professional, and I didn’t stir him up.
    I got back into my house in the following week, and as soon as I got back I went to work. Dixon was pretty rude about it—and to do him justice, I don’t think it did me a lot of good, myself. I used to go down to my office at about ten o’clock and dictate a few letters that Tillotson would generally have to correct for me, and I would listen to him while he outlined his plans for the freight programme in a series of delicately-worded suggestions for my approval. Then I would send him away and sit in my office for a bit with my head in my hands, nursing a tearing headache; at half-past eleven Miss Soames would bring me a cup of tea and I’d take a handful of aspirins with it, and go for a walk round the yard. By then it would be time for a couple of drinks before lunch, and after lunch there were generally things that needed my attention in the yard. It was during that time that
Thelma
came in with her bitts carried away, warping at Fowey for the clay. That kept me busy for three days and sent me a journey to Newton Abbot to pick the timber that I wanted for the job, but mostly I spent the afternoons setting up new running gear in
Runagate
, and trying not to think about my head.
    I might have stayed at home for all the good I was. But down at the yard there were things happening and people to talk to; I’ve never been one for sticking in the house by myself, much.
    My car took about a month to repair; in that month my cousin Joan Stenning became Lady Stenning. Stenning received his knighthood within half an hour of his landing on the Thames, having sweated and cursed his way through his forty-thousand-mile flight alone round the world in the little Rawdon Dabchick flying-boat. He took nine months over the flight, which was more of a business trip than anything else, and