“Oh, nonsense,” said the Vicar, “she’s as strong as a horse.”  And when next she came in to give him his medicine he said to her: 

“Master Philip says you’ve got too much to do, Mrs. Foster.  You like looking after me, don’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t mind, sir.  I want to do everything I can.”

Presently the medicine took effect and Mr. Carey fell asleep.  Philip went into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Foster whether she could stand the work.  He saw that for some months she had had little peace.

“Well, sir, what can I do?” she answered.  “The poor old gentleman’s so dependent on me, and, although he is troublesome sometimes, you can’t help liking him, can you?  I’ve been here so many years now, I don’t know what I shall do when he comes to go.”

Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man.  She washed and dressed him, gave him his food, and was up half a dozen times in the night; for she slept in the next room to his and whenever he awoke he tinkled his little bell till she came in.  He might die at any moment, but he might live for months.  It was wonderful that she should look after a stranger with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic and pitiful that she should be alone in the world to care for him.

It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle had preached all his life was now of no more than formal importance to him:  every Sunday the curate came and administered to him Holy Communion, and he often read his Bible; but it was clear that he looked upon death with horror.  He believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting, but he did not want to enter upon that life.  In constant pain, chained to his chair and having given up the hope of ever getting out into the open again, like a child in the hands of a woman to whom he paid wages, he clung to the world he knew.

In Philip’s head was a question he could not ask, because he was aware that his uncle would never give any but a conventional answer:  he wondered whether at the very end, now that the machine was painfully wearing itself out, the clergyman still believed in immortality; perhaps at the bottom of his soul, not allowed to shape itself into words in case it became urgent, was the conviction that there was no God and after this life nothing.

On the evening of Boxing Day Philip sat in the dining-room with his uncle.  He had to start very early next morning in order to get to the shop by nine, and he was to say good-night to Mr. Carey then.  The Vicar of Blackstable was dozing and Philip, lying on the sofa by the window, let his book fall on his knees and looked idly round the room.  He asked himself how much the furniture would fetch.  He had walked round the house and looked at the things he had known from his childhood; there were a few pieces of china which might go for a decent price and Philip wondered if it would be worth while to take them up to London; but the furniture was of the Victorian order, of mahogany,