r of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a spirit-urn
hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical looking cat had fallen
asleep on the dining-table. Old Jolyon 'shoo'd' her off at once. The
incident was a relief to his feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind
the animal.

"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room. Through the
door in the hall leading to the basement he called "Hssst!" several
times, as though assisting the cat's departure, till by some strange
coincidence the butler appeared below.

"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon. "I will lock up and put
out."

When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately preceded
him, with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had seen through
this manouevre for suppressing the butler from the first....

A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his life.

Young Jolyon could not help smiling. He was very well versed in irony,
and everything that evening seemed to him ironical. The episode of the
cat; the announcement of his own daughter's engagement. So he had no
more part or parcel in her than he had in the Puss! And the poetical
justice of this appealed to him.

"What is June like now?" he asked.

"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; "they say she's like me,
but that's their folly. She's more like your mother--the same eyes and
hair."

"Ah! and she is pretty?"

Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.

"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin. It'll be lonely here when
she's gone, Jo."

The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had felt on
first seeing his father.

"What will you do with yourself, Dad? I suppose she's wrapped up in
him?"

"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his voice.
"It'll be miserable work living here alone. I don't know how it's
to end. I wish to goodness...." He checked himself, and added: "The
question is, what had I better do with this house?"

Young Jolyon looked round the room. It was peculiarly vast and dreary,
decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that he remembered
as a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on bunches of carrots,
together with onions and grapes lying side by side in mild surprise.
The house was a white elephant, but he could not conceive of his father
living in a smaller place; and all the mo