"We might have our little talk now," and when Laurence cleared his throat John felt that the conversation had been opened as successfully as a local bazaar. Not merely did John smile encouragingly, but he actually went so far as to invite him to go ahead. Laurence sighed, and poured himself out a second glass of port. "I find myself in a position of considerable difficulty," he announced, "and should like your advice." John's mind went rapidly to the balance in his passbook instead of to the treasure of worldly experience from which he might have drawn. "Perhaps before we begin our little talk," said Laurence, "it would be as well if I were to remind you of some of the outstanding events and influences in my life. You will then be in a better position to give me the advice and help--ah--the moral help, of which I stand in need--ah--in sore need." "He keeps calling it a little talk," John thought, "but by Jove, it's lucky we did have dinner early. At this rate he won't get back to his vicarage before cock-crow." John was not deceived by his brother-in-law's minification of their talk, and he exchanged the trim Henry Clay he had already clipped for a very large Upman that would smoke for a good hour. "Won't you light up before you begin?" he asked, pushing a box of commonplace Murillos toward his brother-in-law, whose habit of biting off the end of a cigar, of letting it go out, of continually knocking off the ash, of forgetting to remove the band till it was smoldering, and of playing miserable little tunes with it on the rim of a coffee-cup, in fact of doing everything with it except smoke it appreciatively, made it impossible for John, so far as Laurence was concerned, to be generous with his cigars. "I think you'll find these not bad." This was true; the Murillos were not actually bad. "Thanks, I will avail myself of your offer. But to come back to what I was saying," Laurence went on, lighting his cigar with as little expression of anticipated pleasure as might be discovered in the countenance of a lodging-house servant lighting a fire. "I do not propose to occupy your time by an account of my spiritual struggles at the University." "You ought to write a novel," said John, cheerfully. Laurence looked puzzled. "I am now occupied with the writing of a play, but I shall come to that presently. Novels, however...." "I was only joking," said John. "It would take too long to explain the joke. Sorry I interrupted you. Cigar gone out? Don't take another. It doesn't really matter how often those Murillos go out." "Where am I?" Laurence asked in a bewildered voice. "You'd just left Oxford," John answered, quickly.