ld not give way till he saw young
Bosinney with an income of his own. That June would have trouble with
the fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money
than a cow. As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young man's
aunts, he fully expected they were old cats.

And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open eyes,
he might have been asleep.... The idea of supposing that young cub
Soames could give him advice! He had always been a cub, with his nose in
the air! He would be setting up as a man of property next, with a place
in the country! A man of property! H'mph! Like his father, he was always
nosing out bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!

He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking his
cigar-case from a bundle fresh in. They were not bad at the price, but
you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to hold a candle to
those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's. That was a cigar!

The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to those
wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat smoking on the
terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas Treffry and Traquair and
Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy. How good his cigars were then!
Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack Herring--dead, and Traquair--dead of
that wife of his, and Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his
appetite).

Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left, except
Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was no doing
anything with him.

Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still! Of all
his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was the most
poignant, the most bitter. With his white head and his loneliness he
had remained young and green at heart. And those Sunday afternoons on
Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he went for a stretch along the
Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to Child's Hill, and back over the Heath
again to dine at Jack Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were
then! And such weather! There was no weather now.

When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took her to
the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women, her mother and
her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den baited his umbrella with
buns for her favourite bears, how sweet his cigars were then!

Cigars! He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the famous
palate that in