Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping

Sorrell had a few grizzled hairs on his temples, and his eyebrows had grown bushy.

He sat at a desk in the little room where in the early days he had spent so many hours with Thomas Roland's books, and he looked out upon the same garden and the same trees. Everything was the same-- and yet different. He saw the sunlight caught in the purple cups of the tulips, the shadows of the trees lying placidly upon the grass, the wallflowers all crimson and gold. Someone was mowing the grass, a figure in a white sweater and grey flannel trousers that went to and fro with an air of lightness as though the twelve- inch mower were a child's toy.