This was perhaps because Mr.Denner, at sixty-two, did not realize that he had ceased to be, as he would have expressed it, "a gentleman in middle life." He had no landmarks of great emotions to show him how far the sleepy years had carried him from his youth; and life in Ashurst was very placid.

There were no cases to try; property rarely went out of families which had held it when Mr.Denner's father wrote their wills and drew up their deeds in the same brick office which his son occupied now, and it was a point of decency and honor that wills should not be disputed.
Yet Mr.Denner felt that his life was full of occupation.

He had his practicing in the dim organ-loft of St.Michael's and All Angels; and every day when dinner was over, his little nephew slipped from his chair, and stood with his hands behind him to recite his _rego regere_; then there were always his flies and rods to keep in order against the season when he and the rector started on long fishing tramps; and in the evenings, when Willie had gone to bed, and his cook was reading "The Death Beds of Eminent Saints" by the kitchen fire, Mr.Denner worked out chess problems by himself in his library, or read Cavendish and thought of next Saturday; and besides all this, he went once a week to Mercer, and sat waiting for clients in a dark back office, while he studied his weekly paper.
But though there seemed plenty to do, sometimes Mr.Denner would sigh, and say to himself that it was somewhat lonely, and Mary was certainly severe.

He supposed that was because she had no mistress to keep an eye on her.
These weekly games of whist were a great pleasure to him.

The library at the rectory was cheerful, and there was a feeling of importance in playing a game at which the rector and Mrs.Dale only looked on.