The books on his shelves were as orderly as regiments of soldiers, and the backs of them shone like so many bronze beetle-wings; though, if you took one from its place you saw a shabbier volume behind it, since space was limited.

An oval Venetian mirror stood above the fireplace, and reflected duskily in its spotted depths the faint yellow and crimson of a jarful of tulips which stood among the letters and pipes and cigarettes upon the mantelpiece.

A small piano occupied a corner of the room, with the score of "Don Giovanni" open upon the bracket.
"Well, Rodney," said Denham, as he filled his pipe and looked about him, "this is all very nice and comfortable." Rodney turned his head half round and smiled, with the pride of a proprietor, and then prevented himself from smiling.
"Tolerable," he muttered.
"But I dare say it's just as well that you have to earn your own living." "If you mean that I shouldn't do anything good with leisure if I had it, I dare say you're right.

But I should be ten times as happy with my whole day to spend as I liked." "I doubt that," Denham replied.
They sat silent, and the smoke from their pipes joined amicably in a blue vapor above their heads.
"I could spend three hours every day reading Shakespeare," Rodney remarked.

"And there's music and pictures, let alone the society of the people one likes." "You'd be bored to death in a year's time." "Oh, I grant you I should be bored if I did nothing.