"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you, but I
suppose I shall be in the way."

The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack of
sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no means
unattached. Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment;
certainly they were solicitous of each other's welfare, glad of each
other's company. They had never exchanged two words upon the more
intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other's presence the
existence of any deep feeling.

Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for blood,
they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a cold-blooded
man. Indeed, in James love of his children was now the prime motive of
his existence. To have creatures who were parts of himself, to whom he
might transmit the money he saved, was at the root of his saving; and, at
seventy-five, what was left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?
The kernel of life was in this saving for his children.

Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there was no
saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are told, is
self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too far) in all this
London, of which he owned so much, and loved with such a dumb love, as
the centre of his opportunities. He had the marvellous instinctive
sanity of the middle class. In him--more than in Jolyon, with his
masterful will and his moments of tenderness and philosophy--more than in
Swithin, the martyr to crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from
ability--and Roger, the victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of
compromise; of all the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and
person, and for that reason more likely to live for ever.

To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family" significant
and dear. There had always been something primitive and cosy in his
attitude towards life; he loved the family hearth, he loved gossip, and
he loved grumbling. All his decisions were formed of a cream which he
skimmed off the family mind; and, through that family, off the minds of
thousands of other families of similar fibre. Year after year, week
after week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing his
clean-shaven mouth--would sit watching the family