Ronder sat in his study waiting for young Falk Brandon. The books smiled down upon him from their white shelves; because the spring evening was chill a fire glittered and sparkled and the deep blue curtains were drawn. Ronder was wearing brown kid slippers and a dark velvet smoking-jacket. As he lay back in the deep arm-chair, smoking an old and familiar briar, his chubby face was deeply contented. His eyes were almost closed; he was the very symbol of satisfied happy and kind-hearted prosperity. He was really touched by young Falk's approach towards friendship. He had in him a very pleasant and happy vein of sentiment which he was only too delighted to exercise so long as no urgent demands were made upon it. Once or twice women and men younger than himself _had_ made such urgent demands; with what a hurry, a scurry and a scamper had he then run from them! But the more tranquil, easy and unexacting aspects of sentiment he enjoyed. He liked his heart to be warmed, he liked to feel that the pressure of his hand, the welcome of the eye, the smile of the lip were genuine in him and natural; he liked to put his hand through the arm of a young eager human being who was full of vitality and physical strength. He disliked so deeply sickness and decay; he despised them. Falk was young, handsome and eager, something of a rebel--the greater compliment then that he should seek out Ronder. He was certainly the most attractive young man in Polchester and, although that was not perhaps saying very much, after all Ronder lived in Polchester and wished to share in the best of every side of its life. There were, however, further, more actual reasons that Ronder should anticipate Falk's visit with deep interest. He had heard, of course, many rumours of Falk's indiscretions, rumours that naturally gained greatly in the telling, of how he had formed some disgraceful attachment for the daughter of a publican down in the river slums, that he drank, that he gambled, that he was the wickedest young man in Polchester, and that he would certainly break his father's heart. It was this relation of the boy to his father that interested him most of all. He continued to remark to the little god who looked after his affairs and kept an eye upon him that the last thing that he wanted was to interfere in Brandon's family business, and yet to the same little god he could not but comment on the curious persistency with which that same business would thrust itself upon his interest. "If Brandon's wife, son, and general _menage_ will persist in involving themselves in absurd situations it's not my fault," he would say. But he was not exactly sorry that they should.