CHAPTER III
IN WHICH I DISCLOSE A SECRET
YOU never imagined, my dear fellow, in all the years of our intimacy, that I was a gigantic fraud—but I propose to show you myself as I really was.
I started earning my own living as an indoor assistant to a Dr. Shirley Eckington, who had a poor-class practice in Leeds, receiving eighty pounds a year. I had nothing else but a maximum of assurance and a minimum of morality. My life consisted of much hard work, indoor and out, by day, and cards, billiards and barmaids after my work was finished—that is, as much as a doctor's work is ever finished. But as time went on I began to stay at home at nights, for the reason that I had fallen temporarily in love with the doctor's daughter—a pretty, innocent little girl, who looked after her semi-invalid father
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