is head. The dog Balthasar, as close as he might be to the
tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.

Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment short.

What business had his father to come and upset his wife like this? It
was a shock, after all these years! He ought to have known; he ought to
have given them warning; but when did a Forsyte ever imagine that his
conduct could upset anybody! And in his thoughts he did old Jolyon
wrong.

He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their tea.
Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father speak sharply
before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly looking back over her
shoulder.

Young Jolyon poured out the tea.

"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough that
his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden withdrawal, and
almost hated the old man for sitting there so calmly.

"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a shrewd
look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"

Young Jolyon nodded.

"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle lot."

Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'

The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog Balthasar's
scratching.

Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here, Jo; but
I get so lonely!"

At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his father's
shoulder.

In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La Donna
mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had fallen into
shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end, whereon basked
a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily down on the dog
Balthasar. There was a drowsy hum of very distant traffic; the creepered
trellis round the garden shut out everything but sky, and house, and
pear-tree, with its top branches still gilded by the sun.

For some time they sat there, talking but little. Then old Jolyon rose
to go, and not a word was said about his coming again.

He walked away very sadly. What a poor miserable place; and he thought
of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence for a Forsyte,
with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that no one entered from
one week's end to another.

That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned by
half; she gave Jo a bad time he knew! And those sweet children! Ah! what
a piece of awful folly!

He walke