dds and
ends--for nearly every year something had been built, or something
pulled down; then crossing the smooth bit of lawn, Jem Watkins's
special pride, it rested on the sloping field, yellow with tall
buttercups, wavy with growing grass. "Let me see--how long have we
lived here? Phineas, you are the one for remembering dates. What year
was it we came to Longfield?"

"Eighteen hundred and twelve. Thirteen years ago."

"Ah, so long!"

"Not too long," said Mrs. Halifax, earnestly. "I hope we may end our
days here. Do not you, John?"

He paused a little before answering. "Yes, I wish it; but I am not
sure how far it would be right to do it."

"We will not open that subject again," said the mother, uneasily. "I
thought we had all made up our minds that little Longfield was a
thousand times pleasanter than Beechwood, grand as it is. But John
thinks he never can do enough for his people at Enderley."

"Not that alone, love. Other reasons combined. Do you know, Phineas,"
he continued, musingly, as he watched the sun set over Leckington
Hill--"sometimes I fancy my life is too easy--that I am not a wise
steward of the riches that have multiplied so fast. By fifty, a man so
blest as I have been, ought to have done really something of use in the
world--and I am forty-five. Once, I hoped to have done wonderful
things ere I was forty-five. But somehow the desire faded."

His wife and I were silent. We both knew the truth; that calm as had
flowed his outer existence, in which was omitted not one actual duty,
still, for these twelve years, all the high aims which make the glory
and charm of life as duties make its strength, all the active energies
and noble ambitions which especially belong to the prime of manhood, in
him had been, not dead perhaps, but sleeping. Sleeping, beyond the
power of any human voice to waken them, under the daisies of a child's
grave at Enderley.

I know not if this was right--but it was scarcely unnatural. In that
heart, which loved as few men love, and remembered as few men remember,
so deep a wound could never be thoroughly healed. A certain something
in him seemed different ever after, as if a portion of the father's own
life had been taken away with Muriel, and lay buried in the little dead
bosom of his first-born, his dearest child.

"You forget," said Mrs. Halifax, tenderly--"you forget, John, how much
you have been doing, and intend to do. What with your improvements at