Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old Jolyon;

the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the garden-beds looked

'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-stained wall, cats had made a

path.

While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the

peculiar scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the very

young and the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.

The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight brows,

and large, grey eyes. Her hair, brushed in fine, high curves back from

her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and this greyness made the

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sudden vivid colour in her cheeks painfully pathetic.

The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before, such as

she had always hidden from him, was full of secret resentments, and

longings, and fears. Her eyes, under their twitching brows, stared

painfully. And she was silent.

Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions, and

was anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large moustaches, and

hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with legs crossed like his

own father (a habit he was himself trying to acquire), should know it;

but being a Forsyte, though not yet quite eight years old, he made

no mention of the thing at the moment dearest to his heart--a camp of

soldiers in a shop-window, which his father had promised to buy. No

doubt it seemed to him too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention

it yet.

And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party of the

three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree, which had long

borne no fruit.

Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's faces

redden in the sun. He took one of Jolly's hands in his own; the boy

climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized by this sight,

crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's scratching arose

rhythmically.

Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors. A minute later

her husband muttered an excuse, and followed. Old Jolyon was left alone

with his grandchildren.

And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her strange

revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of his heart. And

that tenderness for little children, that passion for the beginnings of

life which had once made him forsake his son and follow June, now worked

in him to forsake June and follow these littler things. Youth, like a

flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round

little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces

so unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues, and the shrill,

chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of

small bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once

more young. And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin-veined hands

soft, and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he

became at once a place of pleasure, a place where they were secure, and

could talk and laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from

old Jolyon's wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.




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