forty you must have your job, you must be independent of other people's
jobs, of human and social contacts, however amusing and instructive.

Rodney wasn't altogether pleased, though he understood. He wanted her
constant companionship and interest in his own work.

"You've had twenty-two years of it, darling," Neville said. "Now I must
Live my own Life, as the Victorians used to put it. I must be a doctor;
quite seriously I must. I want it. It's my job. The only one I could ever
really have been much good at. The sight of human bones or a rabbit's
brain thrills me, as the sight of a platform and a listening audience
thrills you, or as pen and paper (I suppose) thrill the children. You
ought to be glad I don't want to write. Our family seems to run to that
as a rule."

"But," Rodney said, "you don't mean ever to _practise_, surely? You won't
have time for it, with all the other things you do."

"It's the other things I shan't have time for, old man. Sorry, but there
it is.... It's all along of mother, you see. She's such an object lesson
in how not to grow old. If she'd been a doctor, now...."

"She couldn't have been a doctor, possibly. She hasn't the head. On the
other hand, you've got enough head to keep going without the slavery of
a job like this, even when you're old."

"I'm not so sure. My brain isn't what it was; it may soften altogether
unless I do something with it before it's too late. Then there I shall
be, a burden to myself and everyone else.... After all, Rodney, you've
your job. Can't I have mine? Aren't you a modern, an intellectual and a