"Bitterly true--every word--my dear boy. But let us be pleasant. I've had a line to say that old Moulders is very ill, and really dying this time. Just read this melancholy little bulletin." With an air which seemed to say, "well, to please you," he took the note and read it. It was from his steward, to mention that the Rev. Abraham Moulders was extremely ill of his old complaint, and that there was something even worse the matter, and that Doctor Winters had said that morning he could not possibly get over this attack. "Well, Dives, there is a case of 'sick and weak' for you; you'll have prayers for him at Queen's Chorleigh, eh?" "Poor old man!" said Dives, solemnly, with his head thrown back, and his thick eyebrows elevated a little, and looking straight before him as he returned the note, "he's very ill, indeed, unless this reports much too unfavourably." "Too favourably, you mean," suggested the Baronet. "But you know, poor old man, it is only wonderful he has lived so long. The old people about there say he is eighty-seven. Upon my word, old Jenkins says he told him, two years ago, himself, he was eighty-five; and Doctor Winters, no chicken--just sixty--says his father was in the same college with him, at Cambridge, nearly sixty-seven years ago. You know, my dear Jekyl, when a man comes to that time of life, it's all idle--a mere pull against wind and tide, and everything. It is appointed unto all men once to die, you know, and the natural term is threescore years and ten. All idle--all in vain!" And delivering this, the Rev. Dives Marlowe shook his head with a supercilious melancholy, as if the Rev. Abraham Moulders' holding out in that way against the inevitable was a piece of melancholy bravado, against which, on the part of modest mortality, it was his sad duty to protest. Jekyl's cynicism was tickled, although there was care at his heart, and he chuckled. "And how do you know you have any interest in the old fellow's demise?" The Rector coughed a little, and flushed, and looked as careless as he could, while he answered-- "I said nothing of the kind; but you have always told me you meant the living for me. I've no reason, only your goodness, Jekyl." "No goodness at all," said Jekyl, kindly. "You shall have it, of course. I always meant it for you, Dives, and I wish it were better, and I'm very glad, for I'm fond of you, old fellow." Hereupon they both laughed a little, shaking hands very kindly. "Come to the stable, Dives," said the Baronet, taking his arm. "You must choose a horse. You don't hunt now?" "I have not been at a cover for _ten_ years," answered the reverend gentleman, speaking with a consciousness of the demi-shovel. "Well, come along," continued the Baronet. "I want to ask you--let's be serious" (everybody likes to be serious over his own business). "What do you think of these foreign personages?"