This comfortable position was, however, none of his own making.

It had been created by his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present representative of the line.
Darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a buttoned-up pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial subtlety.

In Darton the son, this trade subtlety had become transmuted into emotional, and the harshness had disappeared; he would have been called a sad man but for his constant care not to divide himself from lively friends by piping notes out of harmony with theirs.

Contemplative, he allowed his mind to be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes.

So that, naturally enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a capitalist--a stationary result which did not agitate one of his unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired.