Father Payne by A.C. Benson

It was the first warm and sunny day, after a cold and cloudy spring: I took a long and leisurely walk with Father Payne down a valley among woods, of which Father Payne was very fond. "Almost precipitous for Northamptonshire, eh?" he used to say. I was very full of a book I had been reading, but I could not get him to talk. He made vague and foolish replies, and said several times, "I shall have to think that over, you know," which was, I well knew, a polite intimation that he was not in a mood for talk. But I persisted, and at last he said, "Hang it, you know, I'm not attending -- I'm very sorry -- it isn't your fault -- but there's such a lot going on everywhere." He quoted a verse of _The Shropshire Lad_, of which he was very fond:

"Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more";