with Dartie.' His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever. Nicholas's face also wore a pleasant look.
'Too pale for me,' he said, 'but her figure's capital!'
Roger made no reply.
'I call her distinguished-looking,' he said at last--it was the highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary. 'That young Bosinney will never do any good for himself. They say at Burkitt's he's one of these artistic chaps--got an idea of improving English architecture; there's no money in that! I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it.'
They entered the station.
'What class are you going? I go second.'
'No second for me,' said Nicholas; 'you never know what you may catch.'
He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to South Kensington. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:
'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
'Cantankerous chap Roger always was!'
There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they to be sentimental?
OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA
AT five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea. He was tired, and before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.
-31-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: The Forsyte Saga.
Contributors: John Galsworthy - Author, Geoffrey Harvey - Editor.
Publisher: Oxford University Press.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1995.
Page number: 31.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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