Dandelion Clocks - Mary's Meadow and Other Tales of Fields and Flowers - Juliana Horatia Ewing

I like how the title-linked short story portrays how everyone sets a different course, including children from the same family. From partway down:

He was quite unfitted for a farmer. He was always looking forward to what he should do hereafter, or backward to the time when he believed in fairy clocks. Now a farmer should live in the present, and time himself by a steady-going watch with an enamelled face. Then little things get done at the right time, which is everything in farming.

“Peter Paul puzzles too much,” said his mother, “and that is your fault, Jacob, for giving him a great name. But while he’s thinking, Daisy misses her mash and the hens lay away. He’ll never make a farmer. Indeed, for that matter, men never farm like women, and Leena will take to it after me. She knows all my ways.”

They were a kindly family, with no minds to make this short life bitter for each other by thwarting, as so many well-meaning relatives do; so the boy chose his own trade and went to sea.

He saw many places and many people; he saw a great deal of life, and came face to face with death more than once, and under strange shapes. He found answers to a lot of the old questions, and then new ones came in their stead. Each year seemed to hold more than a life-time at home would have held, and yet how quickly the years went by!

A great many had gone by when Peter Paul set foot once more upon Dutch soil.

“And it only seems like yesterday that I went away!” said he.

Mother was dead. That was the one great change. Peter Paul’s sisters had inherited the farm. They managed it together, and they had divided their mother’s clothes, and also her rings and ear-rings, her gold skull-cap and head-band and pins,—the heirlooms of a Dutch farmeress.

“It matters very little how we divide them, dear,” Anna had said, “for I shall never marry, and they will all go to your girl.”

The elder sister was married and had two children. She had grown up very pretty—a fair woman, with liquid misleading eyes. They looked as if they were gazing into the far future, but they did not see an inch beyond the farm. Anna was a very plain copy of her in body, in mind she was the elder sister’s echo. They were very fond of each other, and the prettiest thing about them was their faithful love for their mother, whose memory was kept as green as pastures after rain.

On Sunday Peter Paul went with them to her grave, and then to service. The ugly little church, the same old clerk, even the look of that part of the seat where Peter Paul had kicked the paint off during sermons—all strengthened the feeling that it could only have been a few days since he was there before.