ils. Walls of a rich green surmounted the oak dado; a heavy
metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling divided by imitation
beams. The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a bargain, one day at
Jobson's sixty years ago--three Snyder "still lifes," two faintly
coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather charming, which bore the
initials "J. R."--Timothy had always believed they might turn out to be
Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired them, had discovered that they
were only John Robinson; and a doubtful Morland of a white pony being
shod. Deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs with
deep-red plush seats, a Turkey carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as
large as the room was small, such was an apartment which Soames could
remember unchanged in soul or body since he was four years old. He
looked especially at the two drawings, and thought: 'I shall buy those at
the sale.'

From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not remember
ever having been in that room. It was lined from floor to ceiling with
volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. One wall seemed devoted
to educational books, which Timothy's firm had published two generations
back-sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book. Soames read their
titles and shuddered. The middle wall had precisely the same books as
used to be in the library at his own father's in Park Lane, from which he
deduced the fancy that James and his youngest brother had gone out
together one day and bought a brace of small libraries. The third wall
he approached with more excitement. Here, surely, Timothy's own taste
would be found. It was. The books were dummies. The fourth wall was
all heavily curtained window. And turned toward it was a large chair
with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on which a yellowish and folded
copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to
come down, as if in preparation for the War, seemed waiting for him
still. In a corner stood a large globe of that world never visited by
Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but England, and
permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very sick one Sunday
afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure boat off the pier at Brighton, with
Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was
always taking things into his head, and who, thank goodness, had been
sick too. Soames knew all about it, havin