ously raised himself, and together they went
slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the firelight, and out
to the stairs. Very slowly they ascended.

"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.

"Good-night, father," answered Soames. His hand stroked down the sleeve
beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it, so thin was
the arm. And, turning away from the light in the opening doorway, he
went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.

'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed; 'I want a
son.'

CHAPTER VI--NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME

Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper lawn at
Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled under it and
said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place for your house."
Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon died, beneath its
branches. And now, close to the swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often
painted there. Of all spots in the world it was perhaps the most sacred
to him, for he had loved his father.

Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but not yet
hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time. That tree had seen,
perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he shouldn't wonder, from
the days of Elizabeth at least. His own fifty years were as nothing
to its wood. When the house behind it, which he now owned, was three
hundred years of age instead of twelve, that tree might still be
standing there, vast and hollow--for who would commit such sacrilege as
to cut it down? A Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house,
to guard it jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look
like coated with such age. Wistaria was already about its walls--the new
look had gone. Would it hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had
bestowed on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and
made it into an asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness? Often,
within and without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had been moved
by the spirit when he built. He had put his heart into that house,
indeed! It might even become one of the 'homes of England'--a rare
achievement for a house in these degenerate days of building. And
the aesthetic spirit, moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of
possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership
thereof. There was the smack of reverence and ancestor-worship (if only
fo