er chintzes
were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all their threadbare
deficiencies. He longed to send for the children; to have them there
beside him, their supple bodies against his knees; to hear Jolly's:
"Hallo, Gran!" and see his rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand
stealing up against his cheek. But he would not. There was solemnity
in what he had come to do, and until it was over he would not play. He
amused himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from everything
in that little house; how he could fill these rooms, or others in some
larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple and Pullbred's; how he
could send little Jolly to Harrow and Oxford (he no longer had faith in
Eton and Cambridge, for his son had been there); how he could procure
little Holly the best musical instruction, the child had a remarkable
aptitude.

As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his heart,
he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the little walled
strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of leaves before its time,
stood with gaunt branches in the slow-gathering mist of the autumn
afternoon. The dog Balthasar, his tail curled tightly over a piebald,
furry back, was walking at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and
at intervals placing his leg for support against the wall.

And old Jolyon mused.

What pleasure was there left but to give? It was pleasant to give, when
you could find one who would be thankful for what you gave--one of your
own flesh and blood! There was no such satisfaction to be had out of
giving to those who did not belong to you, to those who had no claim
on you! Such giving as that was a betrayal of the individualistic
convictions and actions of his life, of all his enterprise, his labour,
and his moderation, of the great and proud fact that, like tens of
thousands of Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens
of thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his
own, in the world.

And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered foliage
of the laurels, the black-stained grass-plot, the progress of the dog
Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen years during which he had
been baulked of legitimate enjoyment mingled its gall with the sweetness
of the approaching moment.

Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from