"I wish we were back forty years, old boy!"
Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own
"Lord's" frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to
save a recurrent crisis. "It's been very amusing, after all. Sometimes I
even wish Monty was back. What do you think of people nowadays, Soames?"
"Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with bicycles
and motor-cars; the War has finished it."
"I wonder what's coming?" said Winifred in a voice dreamy from
pigeon-pie. "I'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines and
pegtops. Look at that dress!"
Soames shook his head.
"There's money, but no faith in things. We don't lay by for the future.
These youngsters--it's all a short life and a merry one with them."
"There's a hat!" said Winifred. "I don't know--when you come to think
of the people killed and all that in the War, it's rather wonderful, I
think. There's no other country--Prosper says the rest are all bankrupt,
except America; and of course her men always took their style in dress
from us."
"Is that chap," said Soames, "really going to the South Seas?"
"Oh! one never knows where Prosper's going!"
"He's a sign of the times," muttered Soames, "if you like."
Winifred's hand gripped his arm.
"Don't turn your head," she said in a low voice, "but look to your right
in the front row of the Stand."
Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey
top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain
elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock,
whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his
feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred's
voice said in his ear:
"Jolyon looks very ill; but he always had style. She doesn't
change--except her hair."
"Why did you tell Fleur about that business?"
"I didn't; she picked it up. I always knew she would."
"Well, it's a mess. She's set her heart upon their boy."
"The little wretch," murmured Winifred. "She tried to take me in about
that. What shall you do, Soames?"
"Be guided by events."
They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.
"Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only
that's so old-fashioned. Look! there are George and Eustace!"
George Forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them.
"Hallo, Soames!" he said. "Just met Profond and your wife. You'll catch
'em if you put on pace. Did you ever go to see old Timothy?"