"We have tried three other servants," said Derrick; "but the plan
doesn't answer. They either won't stand it, or else they are bribed
into smuggling brandy into the house. I find I can do most things
for my father, and in the morning he has an attendant from the
hospital who is trustworthy, and who does what is necessary for him.
At ten we breakfast together, then there are the morning papers,
which he likes to have read to him. After that I go round to the
Pump Room with him--odd contrast now to what it must have been when
Bath was the rage. Then we have lunch. In the afternoon, if he is
well enough, we drive; if not he sleeps, and I get a walk. Later on
an old Indian friend of his will sometimes drop in; if not he likes
to be read to until dinner. After dinner we play chess--he is a
first-rate player. At ten I help him to bed; from eleven to twelve
I smoke and study Socialism and all the rest of it that Lynwood is
at present floundering in."

"Why don't you write, then?"

"I tried it, but it didn't answer. I couldn't sleep after it, and
was, in fact, too tired; seems absurd to be tired after such a day
as that, but somehow it takes it out of one more than the hardest
reading; I don't know why."

"Why," I said angrily, "it's because it is work to which you are
quite unsuited--work for a thick-skinned, hard-hearted, uncultivated
and well-paid attendant, not for the novelist who is to be the chief
light of our generation."

He laughed at this estimate of his powers.