midnight
He was much older than she , without doubt . But age , as he used to say with a smile of immortal youth , is a matter of feeling , not of years . `` And if , sometimes , as she sat by his side on the piazza , her fancy looked through her eyes upon that summer sea , and saw a younger lover , perhaps some one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the foreground of all young maidens ' visions by the sea , yet she could not find one more generous and gracious , nor fancy one more worthy and loving than my grandfather Titbottom . `` And if , in the moonlit midnight , while he lay calmly sleeping , she leaned out of the window , and sank into vague reveries of sweet possibility , and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the water , until the dawn glided over it -- it was only that mood of nameless regret and longing , which underlies all human happiness ; or it was the vision of that life of cities and the world , which she had never seen , but of which she had often read , and which looked very fair and alluring across the sea , to a girlish imagination , which knew that it should never see that reality . `` These West Indian years were the great days of the family , '' said Titbottom , with an air of majestic and regal regret , pausing , and musing , in our little parlor , like a late Stuart in exile , remembering England . Prue raised her eyes from her work , and looked at him with subdued admiration ; for I have observed that , like the rest of her sex , she has a singular sympathy with the representative of a reduced family . Perhaps it is their finer perception , which leads these tender-hearted women to recognize the divine right of social superiority so much more readily than we ; and yet , much as Titbottom was enhanced in my wife 's admiration by the discovery that his dusky sadness of nature and expression was , as it were , the expiring gleam and late twilight of ancestral splendors , I doubt if Mr. Bourne would have preferred him for book-keeper a moment sooner upon that account .