terest."

Leaving the 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. Always something at the back of everything! And
he made his way towards 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 towards 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 '70, a long time before old Mr.
J