Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, reappeared
since. The two friends had passed a night in the house, but had
seen nothing more of the old men. Mr. Goodchild, in rambling about
it, had looked along passages, and glanced in at doorways, but had
encountered no old men; neither did it appear that any old men
were, by any member of the establishment, missed or expected.

Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their attention. It
was, that the door of their sitting-room was never left untouched
for a quarter of an hour. It was opened with hesitation, opened
with confidence, opened a little way, opened a good way,--always
clapped-to again without a word of explanation. They were reading,
they were writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they were
talking, they were dozing; the door was always opened at an
unexpected moment, and they looked towards it, and it was clapped-
to again, and nobody was to be seen. When this had happened fifty
times or so, Mr. Goodchild had said to his companion, jestingly:
'I begin to think, Tom, there was something wrong with those six
old men.'

Night had come again, and they had been writing for two or three
hours: writing, in short, a portion of the lazy notes from which
these lazy sheets are taken. They had left off writing, and
glasses were on the table between them. The house was closed and
quiet. Around the head of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa,
hovered light wreaths of fragrant smoke. The temples of Francis
Goodchild, as he leaned back in his chair, with his two hands
clasped behind his head, and his legs crossed, were similarly
decorated.