He went into Cheriton village early upon the following afternoon, and dropped in upon the doctor, an old inhabitant, whose father and grandfather before him had prescribed for all the parish, rich and poor. Mr. Dolby, _par excellence_ Dr. Dolby, was a bachelor, a spare, sharp-visaged man of about forty, social and expansive, a keen sportsman, and a good billiard player, a man whose lines had been set in pleasant places, for he had inherited a roomy old cottage, with capacious stabling, and twenty acres of the fattest meadow-land in Cheriton parish, and he led exactly that kind of life which his soul loved. It would have been no gain to such a man to have changed places with Baron Rothschild or Lord Salisbury. He would have been in all that constitutes human happiness a loser by such an exchange. So cheery a person was naturally popular in a narrow world like Cheriton, and Mr. Dolby was a general favourite, a favourite in polite society, and in the billiard-room at the Cheriton Arms, which, in default of a club, served as the afternoon and evening rendezvous for lawyer, doctor, and the tenant-farmers of a gentlemanly class—the smock-frock farmers and tradespeople having their own particular meeting place at the Old House at Home, a public-house at the other end of the village. Theodore had known Mr. Dolby from his childhood, and the medical adviser of Cheriton was an occasional dropper-in at the luncheon table in Cornhill, when business transactions with his tailor or his banker took him to the county town. There was nothing unusual, therefore, in Theodore’s afternoon call at Dovecotes, a somewhat picturesque name which had been given to the doctor’s domicile by his predecessor, who had devoted his later years to an ardent cultivation of Barbs and Jacobins and other aristocratic birds, and who had covered a quarter of an acre of garden ground with pigeon-houses of various construction. Theodore found Mr. Dolby smoking his afternoon pipe in the seclusion of his surgery. He had made a long morning round, had driven something between twenty and thirty miles, and considered himself entitled to what he called his otium cum whisky and water, which refreshment stood on a small table at his elbow while he lolled in his capacious easy chair. He welcomed his visitor with effusion, and insisted on calling for another syphon, and having another little table arranged at the elbow of the other easy chair. “Make yourself comfortable, old chap, and let us have a jaw,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for ages. Are you at the Chase?” They talked of the usual village topics, glanced at the great world of politics, speculated upon the prospects of the shooting season, and then Theodore approached the real business of his visit.