If we could find such a man or woman (by great waste of labour, in a search ungracious), and if it should seem worth while to attempt to cure the case, scarcely anything could be thought of, leading more directly towards the end in view, than to fetch that person, and plant him or her, without a word of explanation, among the flower-beds on the little lawn of Beckley Barton. The flowers themselves, and their open eyes, and the sparkling smile of the grass, and the untold commerce of the freighted bees, and rich voluntaries of thrush and blackbird (ruffled to the throat with song); and over the whole the soft flow of sunshine, like a vast pervasive river of gold, with silver wave of clouds--who could dwell on petty aches and pains among such grandeur? The old Squire sat in his bower-chair with a warm cloak over his shoulders. His age was threescore and ten this day; and he looked back through the length of years, and marvelled at their fleeting. The stirring times of his youth, and the daily perils of his prime of life, the long hard battle, and the slow promotion--because he had given offence by some projection of honest opinion--the heavy disappointment, and the forced retirement from the army when the wars were over, with only the rank of Major, which he preferred to sink in Squire--because he ought to have been, according to his own view of the matter, a good Lieutenant-general--and then a very short golden age of five years and a quarter, from his wedding-day to the death of his wife, a single and sweet-hearted wife--and after that (as sorrow sank into the soothing breast of time) the soft, and gentle, and undreamed-of step of comfort, coming almost faster than was welcome, while his little daughter grew. After that the old man tried to think no more, but be content. To let the little scenes of dancing, and of asking, and of listening, and of looking puzzled, and of waiting to know truly whether all was earnest--because already childhood had suspicion that there might be things intended to delude it--and of raising from the level of papa's well-buttoned pocket, clear bright eyes that did not know a guinea from a halfpenny; and then, with the very extraordinary spring from the elasticity of red calves (which happily departs right early), the jumping into opened arms, and the laying on of little lips, and the murmurs of delighted love--to let his recollections of all these die out, and to do without them, was this old man's business now.