The things we do!

Binnie first began jocularly to surmise that Tom was crossed in love;
then seriously to think that his health was suffering and that a doctor
should be called to see him; and at last to agree that idleness was not
good for the Colonel, and that he missed the military occupation to which
he had been for so many years accustomed.
The Colonel insisted that he was perfectly happy and contented. What
could he want more than he had--the society of his son, for the present;
and a prospect of quiet for his declining days? Binnie vowed that his
friend's days had no business to decline as yet; that a sober man of
fifty ought to be at his best; and that Newcome had grown older in three
years in Europe, than in a quarter of a century in the East--all which
statements were true, though the Colonel persisted in denying them.
He was very restless. He was always finding business in distant quarters
of England. He must go visit Tom Barker who was settled in Devonshire, or
Harry Johnson who had retired and was living in Wales.


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