"What shall I be at fifty,
If nature keeps me alive,
If life is so cold and bitter,
When I am but twenty-five?"
It would be too dreary a task to follow them year by year. Let us make leaps and take glimpses at them by intervals.
Twenty-five. What we have seen.
Thirty. Aunt Betsy, weak and childish for many months, has gone to her long home, with a final admonition to Philo that he must make Jack the object of his best watch and care for the entire period of his natural life.
Molly is still pretty, though a little thin and with a perceptible sharpening of the elbows. Her color is not quite so high, nor her figure so plump. She keeps house for the 'squire, with devotion and good management that are the admiration of the town; continues to love and trust in Jack with unabated fervor, though some young women, whom she remembers to have held in her arms when they were babies in long clothes, are long since married and have babies of their own. Still she receives the sometime visits of her laggard lover with the same grace and sweetness, confident that it will all come right in time; has dropped the old familiar "Jack" for "John" or "Mr. Avery," which is a hint that we ought to do so, too.
That unfathomable individual has been for some time a partner in a grocery establishment, carrying on a good business, and realizing fair profits; devotes much of his leisure to revising the imaginary insurance table, and has brought it down considerably closer; maintains a great regard for his Cousin Philo, and has much affectionate solicitude for his health; gives occasionally to various benevolent objects; is extremely regular in all his habits, and is generally regarded as a very nice young man, who has turned out much better than was expected of him.
Philo has purchased a farm in an adjoining town, and is improving it with great care; is considered rather "near" in his dealings, and is generally quite distant and reserved. Suspicions are entertained that he has been disappointed in love, though nobody pretends to know the particulars; always takes a great interest in his Cousin John, whom he suspects of a tendency to dropsy. John, on his part, thinks Philo consumptive.
Thirty-five. No great variation.
Both the farmer and the grocery-man are moderately prosperous; though neither ventures much into speculation, because each is mindful of possibilities in the future that will give great additional advantages. The insurance table has been reduced to one of the exact sciences.