then she came, first with one, then with two, and then with three
children; and then, each year, I saw that these children had grown
bigger, and it was pleasant, as I sat so quietly upon the old
Squire's head, to see them jump out of the carriage each year, run
up to the old man to receive his welcome, and then scamper off into
the garden and fields like so many young animals; it was pleasant to
watch their gleeful faces at his hospitable board, and to hear their
merry shouts; it was pleasant, on Sunday, to see them, with their
father and mother, follow the old gentleman respectfully at a
distance, through the avenue of elms to church, with their small,
solemn faces, just now and then slightly nodding to a buttercup and
snatching it up; while he, with me and his three-cornered hat on his
head, and his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his light drab suit
of clothes, all his dress of the same cloth, and his shoes with gold
buckles, strode along, while Cato, dressed in some of the Squire's
old clothes, walked close behind him like his shadow. You would have
thought my master forty instead of eighty.

Year after year I witnessed this, till, as I said, the children were
youths, and their parents no longer young. Then the good Squire
began to be, as I am now, a little garrulous; he loved to tell old
stories more than once. But who was there that would not, with
patient love, listen to them for many a time?

It was affecting to observe how all his dates were from the year
fifty. No matter what story he told, or when it really did happen,
he always finished by adding, "and that happened in the year fifty."

All his furniture and plate were purchased in the year fifty. It was
to him the beginning of the world.

"Uncle," said one of his nieces one day to him, "let me try to dress
your wig; I think it wants it."

"My dear, this wig was bought in the year fifty, and looks well now.
It has done me good service."

"How beautiful this avenue of elms is!"

"Yes, they were set out in the year fifty."

"You have a good housekeeper, uncle."

"Yes, my dear, she came to me in the year fifty."

And so on with every thing in and about his house, and so it was
with every event which had made an abiding mark on his memory.

There was but one thing about which the good Squire showed the real
childishness of his old age, and that was his fruit. He had bushels
and bushels of apples and pears and peaches, but he never thought
them