"Take things as they are! Do you consider that you have much cause to complain, either the one or the other of you?" old George Bethune resumed, in a still lighter strain. "You have youth and strength, good health, and a constant interest in the life going on around you: is not that sufficient? Why, here am I, nearing my three score years and ten; and every morning that I awake I know that there lies before me another beautiful, interesting, satisfactory day, that I am determined to enjoy to the very utmost of my power. To-morrow?—to-morrow never yet belonged to anybody—never was of any use to anybody: give me to-day, and I am content to let to-morrow shift for itself! Yes," he continued, in firm and proud and almost joyous accents, and he held his head erect, "you may have caught me in some unguarded moment—some moment of nervous weakness or depression—beginning to inquire too curiously into the future; but that was a transient folly; I thank God that it is not my habitual mood! Repining, complaining, anticipating: what good do you get from that? Surely I have had as much reason to repine and complain as most; but I do not waste my breath in remonstrating with ’fickle Fortune.’ ’Fickle Fortune!’" he exclaimed, in his scorn—"if the ill-favoured jade were to come near me I would give her a wallop across the buttocks with my staff, and bid her get out of my road! ’Fickle Fortune!’ She may ’perplex the poor sons of a day;’ but she shall never perplex me—by God and Saint Ringan!" He laughed aloud in his pride.