The pleasant family

When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolled idly to my club. I was perhaps a little lonely, and it was with a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant family life of which I had had a glimpse. They seemed devoted¹ to one another. They had little private jokes of their own which, unintelligible² to the outsider, amused them enormously. Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard that demanded above all things verbal scintillation; but his intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a passport, not only to reasonable success, but still more to happiness. Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and she loved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward³ adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined⁴ to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course -- the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome, manly⁵ fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified⁶ retirement⁷, beloved by their descendants, after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would sink into the grave.