p
the question of the building site.

"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
considering that I shall be the first to build."

Oliver shook his head.

The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've got.
Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."

"Mind," said Soames, "I've not decided; it's quite possible I shan't
build at all. The ground rent's very high."

"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think you'll
make a mistake, Sir. There's not a bit of land near London with such a
view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all things considered; we've only
to advertise, to get a mob of people after it."

They looked at each other. Their faces said very plainly: 'I respect
you as a man of business; and you can't expect me to believe a word you
say.'

Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will very
likely go off!" With these words, taking up his umbrella, he put his
chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the faintest pressure,
and went out into the sun.

He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought. His instinct
told him that what the agent had said was true. A cheap site. And the
beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not really think it cheap;
so that his own intuitive knowledge was a victory over the agent's.

'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,' he thought.

The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses. The sappy
scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where, hidden in the
depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the warm breeze, came the
rhythmic chiming of church bells.

Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and closing
as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel. But when he arrived
at the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen. After waiting some little
time, he crossed the warren in the direction of the slope. He would have
shouted, but dreaded the sound of his voice.

The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by the
rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the larks.

Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to
the civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by the
loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air. He had
begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of Bosinney