nowadays, what a rotten thing life is, with all its changes. At least, I should have been glad to let it remain as it was. . . ."
"How, Daddy?"
"As it used to be when you were a small boy. I have gradually come to lose you entirely . . . and I have so little, apart from you."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Yes, I have gradually come to lose you entirely. . . . In the old days, when you were a schoolboy . . . then you belonged to me. Then came your time at college: that took a bit of you from me. Your eighteen months in the hospitals at Amsterdam: I never saw you. Your year, after that, in Vienna: I never saw you. I was lucky if I got a letter now and again. Then you came back, took your degree. And then . . . then you went and got married."
"And we have always remained with you."
"And every year I lost a bit more of you. You no longer belong to me. There was a time when I used to share you with Mamma; and you remember that I used to find that pretty hard occasionally. But now I share you . . . with all the world."
"Not with all the world, Daddy."
"Well, with half the world then. With your wife, with Aunt Adeline and your nine adopted children, with all your outside interests."
"Those are my patients."
"You have a great many of them . . . for a young doctor. And . . ."
"Well, Daddy?"
"Nothing, old boy. I only wanted to give you a piece of advice; but who am I to advise you?"
"Why not, Daddy?"
"I don't count."
"Now then!"
