bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous peace
of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'During coverture! Why can't
they exclude fellows like Profond, instead of a lot of hard-working
Germans?' and was surprised at the depth of uneasiness which could
provoke so unpatriotic a thought. But there it was! One never got
a moment of real peace. There was always something at the back of
everything! And he made his way toward Green Street.

Two hours later by his watch, Thomas Gradman, stirring in his swivel
chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting into
his waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave him a
protuberance 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
judg