"The thing was
very well done. Blackley's? I'll make a note of them. Buxton's done me
no good. These Boers are upsetting me--that fellow Chamberlain's driving
the country into war. What do you think?"

"Bound to come," murmured Soames.

Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, clean-shaven cheeks, very rosy
after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips. This
business had revived all his Liberal principles.

"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel. House-property will go down
if there's war. You'll have trouble with Roger's estate. I often told
him he ought to get out of some of his houses. He was an opinionated
beggar."

'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames. But he never argued with an
uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a long-headed
chap,' and the legal care of their property.

"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice, "that
Dartie has gone off at last. That'll be a relief to your father. He was
a rotten egg."

Again Soames nodded. If there was a subject on which the Forsytes really
agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.

"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again. Winifred had
better have the tooth out, I should say. No use preserving what's gone
bad."

Soames looked at him sideways. His nerves, exacerbated by the interview
he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal allusion in
those words.

"I'm advising her," he said shortly.

"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home. I'm
very poorly. Remember me to your father."

And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the
steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the
junior porter.

'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused
Soames, 'or seen him look other than everlasting. What a family! Judging
by him, I've got thirty-eight years of health before me. Well, I'm not
going to waste them.' And going over to a mirror he stood looking at
his face. Except for a line or two, and three or four grey hairs in his
little dark moustache, had he aged any more than Irene? The prime of
life--he and she in the very prime of life! And a fantastic thought shot
into his mind. Absurd! Idiotic! But again it came. And genuinely alarmed
by the recurrence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which
presages a feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine. Eleven
stone! He had not varie