encouraged
to be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education,
little Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children
should not be forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two
hours every morning to teach him her language, together with history,
geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave him
disagreeable, for she had a way of luring him from tune to tune, never
making him practise one which did not give him pleasure, so that he
remained eager to convert ten thumbs into eight fingers. Under his
father he learned to draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a
highly educated little boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed
in his mouth without spoiling it, though "Da" sometimes said that other
children would do him a "world of good."

It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held
him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did
not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a
Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There was something appalling in the
utter helplessness of that position, and the uncertainty as to whether
it would ever come to an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more!
He suffered torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse
than anything was his perception that "Da" had taken all that time
to realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was
revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.

When he was let up he remained convinced that "Da" had done a dreadful
thing. Though he did not wish to bear witness against her, he had been
compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and say: "Mum,
don't let 'Da' hold me down on my back again."

His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits of
hair--"couleur de feuille morte," as little Jon had not yet learned
to call it--had looked at him with eyes like little bits of his brown
velvet tunic, and answered:

"No, darling, I won't."

She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied;
especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where he
happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to his
father:

"Then, will you tell 'Da,' dear, or shall I? She's so devoted to him";
and his father's answer:

"Well, she mustn't show it that way. I know exactly what it feels like
to be held down on one's back. N