Rod felt the firm pressure of his hand-clasp, wondered at the extraordinary vitality of the man. From this same vantage he had once fired a muzzle-loader at the painted Chilcotins. Down that same channel his eyes had beheld the historic Beaver, the first steamer to furrow the Pacific. He had seen the Anglo-Saxon and industry lay the firm foundation of a new commonwealth. He had seen steam supplant sail. And his eyes were keen yet, although he was eighty-three and walked slowly, leaning on a stick.
"You've filled out," the old man eyed him critically. "Did you get anything out of McGill besides girls and athletics? I understand you are being noticed in sport. I take the queening for granted."
"Why, gran'pere," Rod laughed, "does it run in the family? I haven't heard that the Norquays who attended McGill were outstanding cavaliers."
He made a mental reservation about Grove. Echoes of that young man's affairs still reverberated faintly along the St. Lawrence.
Grandfather Norquay smiled.
"In my day we were wild perhaps, but not wanton," he said. "I don't know the present generation very well, my boy. But it has curious aspects—what I see of it now and then."
"Are we much different from other generations, do you think?" Rod asked.
"In certain features," the old man answered slowly. "Yes. Very much. But I may be wrong—and it doesn't matter. I have seen a great deal of change. Some things go on unchanged. Others—my father, I recollect once—"
He went off upon a tangent of reminiscence. Rod listened, wondering if there would come a time when he would sit with snow-white hair and withered skin, telling his grandson of the now, which would then be fifty years under the horizon of time.
He went downstairs presently to have a bite of lunch, then outside to walk here and there. The warm June hush filled the parked spaces, that languorous stillness with an undertone of humming insects and—when one sat perfectly still to listen—the flutter and rustle of foraging birds. Under the drowsiness invisible growth, vegetable growth, responding vigorously to the warmth of sun on moist, fecund earth. One could almost hear the murmur of countless inorganic changes, expansions, all the old forms renewing themselves in the appointed way.