Perhaps she had formerly displayed rather more than a motherly feeling for one of her son's friends, but she now occupied too high a position in the business to indulge in such childishness.
He says that the end of this eventful history is the seventh stage of life, what he calls second childishness, where a person lives without teeth, sight, taste, and most everything else.
It is interesting to note the extremes possible in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor.