No, I was certainly not an old man, unless a well preserved specimen of forty-eight, with simple habits, can so be styled.
Tommy stood expectant before me, his bare feet well apart, a very embodiment of young health, and, as I looked at him, a horrid doubt crept into my mind—had I—could I possibly have become that most objectionable of persons, a man in a groove?
"Do come," said Tommy.
"Don't be a fool," said Wisdom (only I was not quite sure of the speaker).
I looked round at the meadow, and the wood, and saw that we were alone.
"It is April," I said weakly.
"But it's quite warm—it is really." And so I fell.
To you, O reader, it may seem a quite small matter, but to me it was far from being so, for as I climbed the bank from each glad plunge I felt in my blood a strange desire growing to do something, to achieve, to surmount.
Such emotions I had not known for years—not since—a time, when, on a day, I had set myself to love seclusion and inactivity, and to live in study and retrospect, on the small means that were mine.
Ah, Tommy, never think that if any one desire be unfulfilled, life has therefore lost its sweetness, and its mission, and its responsibility!