He looked about him vaguely; the place, of course, was much the same as it had been for the last five hundred years, but, as he could see from the names on the copybooks that lay about, the pupils who inhabited it had changed.

Of the whole six not one was the same.
Then, perhaps for the first time, he began to understand how variable is the world, a mere passing show in which nothing remains the same, except the houses and the trees.

Even these depart, for a cottage with which he had been familiar from his earliest infancy, as he could see through the open door, was pulled down to make room for "improvements," and the great old elm, where the rooks used to build, had been torn up in a gale.

Only its ugly stump and projecting roots were left.
So he sat musing there, very depressed at heart, till at length Mrs.
Parsons came and discovered him in a half-doze.

She, too, was somewhat changed, for of a sudden age had begun to take a hold of her.