Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou’ west, too⁠—a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek. Somehow, today, he wanted company⁠—wanted a pretty face to look at. People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought: “One’s never had enough. With a foot in the grave one’ll want something, I shouldn’t be surprised!” Down here⁠—away from the exigencies of affairs⁠—his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, “Open, sesame,” to him day and night. And sesame had opened⁠—how much, perhaps, he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to call “Nature,” genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so.