nce
on the liver side, brushed his old top hat round with his sleeve, took
his umbrella, and descended. Thick, short, and buttoned closely into his
old frock coat, he walked toward Covent Garden market. He never missed
that daily promenade to the Tube for Highgate, and seldom some critical
transaction on the way in connection with vegetables and fruit.
Generations might be born, and hats might change, wars be fought, and
Forsytes fade away, but Thomas Gradman, faithful and grey, would take his
daily walk and buy his daily vegetable. Times were not what they were,
and his son had lost a leg, and they never gave him those nice little
plaited baskets to carry the stuff in now, and these Tubes were
convenient things--still he mustn't complain; his health was good
considering his time of life, and after fifty-four years in the Law he
was getting a round eight hundred a year and a little worried of late,
because it was mostly collector's commission on the rents, and with all
this conversion of Forsyte property going on, it looked like drying up,
and the price of living still so high; but it was no good worrying--" The
good God made us all"--as he was in the habit of saying; still, house
property in London--he didn't know what Mr. Roger or Mr. James would say
if they could see it being sold like this--seemed to show a lack of
faith; but Mr. Soames--he worried. Life and lives in being and
twenty-one years after--beyond that you couldn't go; still, he kept his
health wonderfully--and Miss Fleur was a pretty little thing--she was;
she'd marry; but lots of people had no children nowadays--he had had his
first child at twenty-two; and Mr. Jolyon, married while he was at
Cambridge, had his child the same year--gracious Peter! That was back
in '69, a long time before old Mr. Jolyon--fine judge of property--had
taken his Will away from Mr. James--dear, yes! Those were the days when
they were buyin' property right and left, and none of this khaki and
fallin' over one another to get out of things; and cucumbers at twopence;
and a melon--the old melons, that made your mouth water! Fifty years
since he went into Mr. James' office, and Mr. James had said to him:
"Now, Gradman, you're only a shaver--you pay attention, and you'll make
your five hundred a year before you've done." And he had, and feared
God, and served the Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. And,
buying a copy of John Bull--not that he approved of it, an extr