“I don’t expect a miracle,” he answered.

“I think you’re wise to let me try what I can do.  You’ll find a club-foot rather a handicap in practice.  The layman is full of fads, and he doesn’t like his doctor to have anything the matter with him.”

Philip went into a `small ward’, which was a room on the landing, outside each ward, reserved for special cases.  He remained there a month, for the surgeon would not let him go till he could walk; and, bearing the operation very well, he had a pleasant enough time.  Lawson and Athelny came to see him, and one day Mrs. Athelny brought two of her children; students whom he knew looked in now and again to have a chat; Mildred came twice a week.  Everyone was very kind to him, and Philip, always surprised when anyone took trouble with him, was touched and grateful.  He enjoyed the relief from care; he need not worry there about the future, neither whether his money would last out nor whether he would pass his final examinations; and he could read to his heart’s content.  He had not been able to read much of late, since Mildred disturbed him:  she would make an aimless remark when he was trying to concentrate his attention, and would not be satisfied unless he answered; whenever he was comfortably settled down with a book she would want something done and would come to him with a cork she could not draw or a hammer to drive in a nail.

They settled to go to Brighton in August.  Philip wanted to take lodgings, but Mildred said that she would have to do housekeeping, and it would only be a holiday for her if they went to a boarding-house.

“I have to see about the food every day at home, I get that sick of it I want a thorough change.”

Philip agreed, and it happened that Mildred knew of a boarding-house at Kemp Town where they would not be charged more than twenty-five shillings a week each.  She arranged with Philip to write about rooms, but when he got back to Kennington he found that she had done nothing.  He was irritated.

“I shouldn’t have thought you had so much to do as all that,” he said.

“Well, I can’t think of everything.  It’s not my fault if I forget, is it?”

Philip was so anxious to get to the sea that he would not wait to communicate with the mistress of the boarding-house.

“We’ll leave the luggage at the station and go to the house and see if they’ve got rooms, and if they have we can just send an outside porter for our traps.”

“You can please yourself,” said Mildred stiffly.

She did not like being reproached, and, retiring huffily into a haughty silence, she sat by listlessly while Philip made the preparations for their departure.  The little flat was hot and stuffy under the August sun, and from the road beat up a malodorous sultriness.  As he lay in his bed in the small ward with its red, distempered walls he had longed for fresh air and the splashing of the sea against his breast.  He felt he would go mad if he had to spend another night in London.  Mildred recovered her good temper when she saw the streets of Brighton crowded with people making holiday, and they were both in high spirits as they drove out to Kemp Town.  Philip stroked the baby’s cheek.