And Arthur Vance said: “But I’ve been thinking about getting one.”

He had not been thinking about getting one.

He had no intention of getting a dog.

He got one fourteen months later, a bad-tempered rescue beagle named Officer, because by then it was a thing he had said to a child on a step and he had decided he was not going to be a man who had said it for nothing.

“Come inside,” he said.