he seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in
startling fashion by Timothy. The youngest of the old Forsytes--scarcely
eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble their father, 'Superior
Dosset,' even in his best-known characteristic of drinking Sherry--had
been invisible for so many years that he was almost mythical. A long
generation had elapsed since the risks of a publisher's business had
worked on his nerves at the age of forty, so that he had got out with a
mere thirty-five thousand pounds in the world, and started to make
his living by careful investment. Putting by every year, at compound
interest, he had doubled his capital in forty years without having once
known what it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters. He was
now putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his capital
again before he died. What he would do with it then, with his sisters
dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by free spirits such
as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second, Christopher, whose
spirit was so free that he had actually said he was going on the stage.
All admitted, however, that this was best known to Timothy himself, and
possibly to Soames, who never divulged a secret.

Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and robust
appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey hair, and
little of the refinement of feature with which most of the Forsytes had
been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman of some beauty and a
gentle temperament. It was known that he had taken surprising interest
in the war, sticking flags into a map ever since it began, and there was
uneasiness as to what would happen if the English were driven into the
sea, when it would be almost impossible for him to put the flags in the
right places. As to his knowledge of family movements or his views about
them, little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring
that he was very upset. It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the only
really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the lower
part of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the awed voice
of Aunt Hester:

"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."

Timothy's greeting to them all w