The grouping of the man and the dog in the warm, firelit room made a pleasing, homelike picture, so different in effect from the ordinary picture of John Musgrave reading in scholarly solitude by his shaded lamp, without the solace of tobacco even, that it scarcely seemed the same room or the same man seated in the big chair wreathed in ascending clouds of blue smoke spirals. This picture, as it impressed the vicar, when a few evenings later he was shown in and beheld a similar grouping, so similar that it appeared as if the man and dog had remained in the same positions without interruption, was so surprising, despite its cosy, natural air, that he entirely forgot the object of his visit, nor remembered it until he was on his homeward way. "Hallo!" he exclaimed, as John Musgrave rose to greet him, and, removing the cigar from his mouth, wrung his hand warmly. "You look jolly comfortable. The wind is bitter to-night. It is good to shelter in a room like this." "Sit down," said Mr Musgrave. He pushed the cigars towards his friend. "Will you smoke?" he asked. Walter Errol's eyes twinkled as he accepted a cigar and snipped the end with a contemplative stare at Diogenes. He did not, however, betray the amazement he felt, but appeared to regard these innovations as very ordinary events. The big dog sprawling before the hearth and the smoke-laden atmosphere of the room which, until Mrs Chadwick had first profaned it, had been preserved from the fumes of tobacco, were surprisingly agreeable novelties. The vicar had seldom enjoyed an evening in John Musgrave's drawing-room so much as he enjoyed that evening, sitting chatting with his friend over old college days and acquaintances. It was late when he rose to go, and still he had not mentioned the matter about which he had come, did not mention it at all; it had slipped from his mind entirely. "It's so comfortable here," he said, with his jolly laugh, "that I'm loth to go, John. There is only one substitution I could suggest, and one addition, to improve the picture." "What are they?" asked Mr Musgrave, his glance travelling round the homelike room. The vicar paused and seemed to reflect. "Well," he said at last, "I would substitute a child in place of the dog, and... But you don't need to inquire what form the addition would take. We've discussed all that before. I'm not sure I wouldn't make them both additions," he added, "and let the dog remain." Mr Musgrave reddened. "Don't you think," he suggested, with a diffidence altogether at variance with his usual manner of receiving this advice, "that I am rather old for such changes?" "You are just over forty," the other answered, "and forty is the prime of life... Any age is the prime of life when a man is disposed to regard it so. You grow younger every day, John."