"It's almost too warm an evening for the house," said Gilbert; "I think
I'll take a stroll."
"I'd come with you, old fellow, but I've been all round the farm, and I'm
dead beat," said good-natured Martin Lister.
"Thanks, Martin; I wouldn't think of disturbing you. You look the picture
of comfort in that easy-chair. I shall only stay long enough to finish a
cigar."
He walked slowly across the lawn--a noble stretch of level greensward
with dark spreading cedars and fine old beeches scattered about it; he
walked slowly towards the gates, lighting his cigar as he went, and
thinking. He was thinking of his past life, and of his future. What was
it to be? A dull hackneyed course of money-making, chequered only by the
dreary vicissitudes of trade, and brightened only by such selfish
pleasures as constitute the recreations of a business man--an occasional
dinner at Blackwall or Richmond, a week's shooting in the autumn, a
little easy-going hunting in the winter, a hurried scamper over some of
the beaten continental roads, or a fortnight at a German spa? These had
been his pleasures hitherto, and he had found life pleasant enough.
Perhaps he had been too busy to question the pleasantness of these
things. It was only now that he found himself away from the familiar
arena of his daily life, with neither employment nor distraction, that
was able to look back upon his career deliberately, and risk himself
whether it was one that he could go on living without weariness for the
remainder of his days.
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