Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping

Sorrell was fifty years old when he became a gardener, and began to think less of pound notes and more of flowers. The material struggle had passed, and in passing had left him standing like a man made aware of an English Spring after the chill and the greyness of a Channel crossing, those greenly cushioned hills, the woods purple and gold with the swelling of the buds, the innocent faces of the primroses looking up. "Why fret?" And when a thrush sang to him. "Why worry, why worry?" his heart answered, --"Ah, -- why?"

The phase came suddenly, and yet no phase is sudden, for a man is what he has been, and there is no growth without roots. To Sorrell it came like the opening of a door in a high, old wall, and within he beheld the ultimate inwardness of his very self, a self that had been growing through all the years.