"Retire! Why, you're not feeling out of sorts, are you, sir? You seem wonderfully fit." "I am. Wonderfully fit--to retire! I'm turned seventy and I'm tired. And I'm not as quick as I was. When I sit in the Divisional Court with a quick fellow--like Naresby, for instance, a lad of forty-nine or so--I find it hard to keep up. He's got hold of the point while I'm still putting on my spectacles! It isn't always the point really, but that's neither here nor there. So I'm going. They'll give me my Right Honourable, I suppose, and I shall vanish becomingly." "I'm awfully sorry. I wanted to have a case before you some day! Now I shan't. But, I say, they ought to make you a peer. You're about the--well, the best-known judge on the Bench." Sir Christopher shook his head. "That's my rings, not me," he said, smiling. "No, what's the use of a peerage to me, even if it was offered? I'm not fit to sit in the Lords--not enough of a lawyer--and I've no son. If you were my son in the flesh, my dear boy, as I've rather come to think of you in the spirit, these last weeks, I might ask for one for your sake! But I've got only one thing left to do now--and that's a thing a peerage can't help about." Arthur was deeply touched, but found nothing to say. "It's a funny thing to come to the end of it all," the old man mused. "And to look back to the time when I was where you are, and to remember what I expected--though, by the way, that's hard to remember exactly! A lot of work, a lot of nonsense! And to see what's become of the other fellows too--who's sunk, and who's swum! Some of the favourites have won, but a lot of outsiders! I was an outsider myself; they used to tell me I should marry a rich wife and chuck it. But I've never married a wife at all, and I stuck to it. And the women too!" Arthur knew that gossip, floating down the years, credited Sir Christopher with adventures of the heart. But the old man now shook his head gently and smiled rather ruefully. "Very hard to get that back! It all seems somehow faded--the colour gone out." He lapsed into silence till they approached the end of their drive. Then he roused himself from his reverie to say, "So old Horace must come and see the end of me, and you and I must say good-bye. Our jaunt's been very pleasant to me. I think it has to you, hasn't it, Arthur?" "It's been more than pleasant, sir. It's been somehow--I don't quite know what to call it--broadening, perhaps. I've spread out--didn't you call it that the other day?" "Yes. Go on doing that. It enriches your life, though it mayn't fill your pocket. Make acquaintances--friends in different sets. Know all sorts of people. Go and see places. No reason to give up the theatre even! Fill your store-house against the time when you have to live on memory."