A few hours later they sat down to dinner together, and the lawyer looked with envy at the hearty way in which the country brother ate his food, and the relish with which he seemed able to take anything that was set before him. His own appetite was fickle to the last degree, and even when he ate any of the courses it was with a doleful presentiment as to the effect they would have upon him. It was after midnight before the lawyer could make up his mind to go to bed, and he went with the expectation of a restless night. By that time the other brother was enjoying a deep, untroubled slumber. Six months later you might have seen those two men again walking side by side. This time it was on an August morning amongst the fields and hedgerows. The difference between them was not so marked on this occasion. The lawyer held his head higher, his eyes were brighter, and his cheeks had lost much of their pallor. He did not look down at the ground either, but gazed all around him, and some of the careworn lines had disappeared from his face. He had had three weeks of pure, country air, and had spent most of it in the open. He was dreading the time, a few days hence, when he would have to return to town. That was not anything out of the common. We have all seen people returning from their holidays looking like that. The surprising part--surprising even to the man himself--was to follow. For during the following winter you might have watched that lawyer stepping out of his office any afternoon, and would have been amazed to notice that he had never lost the improvement which he had gained during his weeks in the country. His dread that he would sink back into the same nervous, dyspeptic state as before had been unfounded. For it was only a few days after he had got back to town that he had been talking to a friend and telling him how much better he had felt after his open-air holiday. And the friend had said, “Then why not keep it up now you are at home?” That remark had set the lawyer thinking, and the force of it had impressed him deeply. So instead of driving to his office each day he had made a habit of covering the three miles on foot, and returning home in the evening in the same way. He had taken every opportunity of having a walk, either along the streets or in the park, and had felt a new man after it. And it was not only his bodily health which had benefited; his nervousness had gone, and he had ceased to worry over his work and all his other affairs. He had found not only fresh air during these walks, but a vast number of other things to interest him at the same time. And the weather did not seem of nearly the same importance as before. If it was wet, he took a coat and umbrella and trudged through it as contentedly as if he were enjoying bright sunshine. To his surprise, he did not catch cold nearly so often as he had been accustomed to do.