A method of “inner and outer expansions” employed by Cox and Brenner (1967) is used to calculate the hydrodynamic force experienced by either of two identical small solid spheres, approaching each other, at low Reynolds number, with the same velocity along their line of centres, for the limiting case when the gap width between them tends to zero. Numerical results are compared with those furnished by the exact solution and an improved expression is then obtained for a similar problem arising from the motion of a small sphere towards an identical stationary sphere, in the limit of small gap widths.