s that his unknown friend with extremely large moustaches, and
hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with legs crossed like his own
father (a habit he was himself trying to acquire), should know it; but
being a Forsyte, though not yet quite eight years old, he made no mention
of the thing at the moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a
shop-window, which his father had promised to buy. No doubt it seemed to
him too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.

And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party of the
three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree, which had long
borne no fruit.

Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's faces
redden in the sun. He took one of Jolly's hands in his own; the boy
climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized by this sight, crept
up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's scratching arose
rhythmically.

Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors. A minute later
her husband muttered an excuse, and followed. Old Jolyon was left alone
with his grandchildren.

And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her strange
revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of his heart. And
that tenderness for little children, that passion for the beginnings of
life which had once made him forsake his son and follow June, now worked
in him to forsake June and follow these littler things. Youth, like a
flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round
little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues, and the shrill,
chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of small
bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once more
young. And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin-veined hands soft,
and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he became at
once a place of pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk
and laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old Jolyon's
wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.

But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was different.

He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with her hands
before her face.

Her shoulders were shaking with sobs. This passion of hers for suffering
was mysterious to him. He had been through