The two had lived together since Philip had returned from India as a man of fifty, with the reasonable hope of enjoying his pensioned retirement. Philip had spent his energy freely in the Indian Civil Service, and the two middle-aged brothers, either too poor to marry, too shy, or both, determined to combine resources with companionship and keep house together. For a time they sailed contentedly downstream. Philip’s public spirit and industrious habits would not permit of what he called “a life of indolent ease.” He rose early and put in a good eight hours’ day at various unpaid labours. He became churchwarden of the parish, joined the vestry, and was a much valued unit of that obscure element in the population which does a great part of the public work for which individuals of a less modest type get the recognition. David earned his living as a journalist and literary hack. He had never done or been anything else in his life, although to his small circle he loved, in a guileless way, to convey the impression that his youthful performances had been of no little brilliance. He would mention the names of the celebrated editors by whom he had been employed as literary or dramatic critic, and was never tired of eulogizing these and other lettered heroes for whom he had slaved in the distant past. He insisted on the appreciation that these forgotten lions had shown of his work; but, however that might be, its manifestation had certainly never been translated into terms of cash, for within no one’s memory had David’s pecuniary resources been other than exiguous. He was a great lover of the Arts, but his tastes were catholic and he worshipped at many shrines. He had no great patience with those who admire the modern to the exclusion of the old, or whose allegiance to one school precludes acceptance of another. He held his arms wide open and embraced Art in all its manifestations. He was a great hero-worshipper; there was no sort of achievement he did not admire, but he had his special favourites; generally these were successful playwrights or novelists whose work he revised for publication at a minimum rate and whose additional recognition, in the form of a back seat for a first night or a signed presentation copy, produced in him a quite inordinate gratitude. David Saunderson was the embodiment of ponderousness; he spoke as slowly as he moved his cumbersome limbs. So gradual were his mental processes that his friends forbore to ask him questions, knowing that they would not have time to wait for his replies. For these reasons the agile in body and mind avoided encounters with him, but if he chanced to meet them where there was no escape they would evade him by cunning or invent transparent excuses which only one so artless as he would have believed.