Chapter 15 Retirement 
NCE settled into his cottage, Mr. Smith 
indulged himself a little more in memories 
of his prime, of his father, and of the far-off 
Farnborough days. Many details came 
from him of the pottery and of the clay. He 
told of the clay-audits he had attended at Farn- 
ham; he talked of the Harvest Suppers in the 
old farm kitchen; he recalled his father’s fond 
visits to many corners of the farm-house in the 
last day that old man spent downstairs. These 
reminiscences may have been partly awakened in 
Mr. Smith by his unwonted freedom from the 
worst cares of business; he was already an older 
man than his father had lived to be, and his 
thoughts in those days were probably drawn 
often to such comparisons. But there was 
another thing. In the turn-out of his household 
goods for removal—though he had no super- 
fluity of furniture—several things hardly thought 
of for years had come under his notice again, 
with keen suggestiveness for him. The little 
rush-bottomed chair used in his father’s last 
wanderings about the house was one of these 
mementoes. It meant more to Mr. Smith than 
to anybody else; and he found a place for it 
now on the landing of the cottage stairs, where 
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