With their wives and husband--in course of time they had all married--they very often came to see him, bringing their children. To the old man these little visitors were worth more than all hydropathy; to help in playing with the toys that he himself had given them, to stroke his grandsons’ yellow heads, and ride them on his knee; to press his silver whiskers to their ruddy cheeks, pinching their little legs to feel how much there was of them, and loving them the more, the more there was to love--this made his heart feel warm. The dearest moments, he knew now, the consolation of his age, were those he spent reflecting how--of the young things he loved, who seemed to love him too a little--not one would have secured to him or her less than twelve or thirteen hundred pounds a year; more, if he could manage to hold on a little longer. For fifty years at least the flesh and blood he left behind would be secure. His eye and mind, quick to notice things like that, had soon perceived the difference of the younger generation’s standards from his own; his children had perhaps a deeper veneration for the means of living while they were alive, but certainly less faith in keeping up their incomes after they were in their graves. And so, unconsciously, his speculation passed them by, and travelled to his grandchildren, telling itself that these small creatures who nestled up against him, and sometimes took him walks, would, when they came to be grown men and women, have his simpler faith, and save the money that he left them, for their own grandchildren. Thus, and thus only, would he live, not fifty years, but a hundred, after he was dead. But he was rendered very anxious by the law, which refused to let him tie his money up in perpetuity.