ad first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left
only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester,
Susan! And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except
when I get that pain.'

His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had bought
his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin
Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger
every spring, living in the country with his son and his
grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly
and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of
Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no
work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and
mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the
whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had
gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June,
Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.
Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in
Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother. Curiously
perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because
his son was not there. Jo was never anything but a comfort and a
pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the
best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.

Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree
in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the
last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a delicious air,
sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek.
Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face to look at.
People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the
un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:
'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,
I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here--away from the exigencies of
affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little
domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened--how much, perhaps,
he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to
call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive,