The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not that Mrs.

Small or Aunt Hester ever took it. They had indeed no money to invest;

but it seemed to bring them into such exciting touch with the realities

of life. It was an event. They would ask Timothy, they said. But they

never did, knowing in advance that it would upset him. Surreptitiously,

however, for weeks after they would look in that paper, which they took

with respect on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see

whether 'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or

down. Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at all; and

they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin came in, and ask

them in voices trembling with curiosity how that 'Bolivia Lime and

Speltrate' was doing--they could not find it in the paper.

And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for? Some trash!

You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in lime, and things

you know nothing about! Who told you?" and ascertaining what they had

been told, he would go away, and, making inquiries in the City, would

perhaps invest some of his own money in the concern.

It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of mutton

had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder, looking airily

round, said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed to-day in Richmond

Park? You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--Mr. Bosinney. They must have

been down to look at the house!"

Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word. It was the piece of

evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.

To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the Italian

lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames' rupture with

his architect. She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression

her words would make.

Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face

to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On either side of her

a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate,

ate his mutton steadily.

These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that

they were known as the Dromios. They never talked, and seemed always

completely occupied in doing nothing. It was popularly supposed that

they were cramming for an important examination. They walked without

hats for long hours in the Gardens attached to their house, books in

their hands, a fox-terrier at their heels, never saying a word, and

smoking all the time. Every morning, about fifty yards apart, they

trotted down Campden Hill on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their

own, and every morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart,

they cantered up again. Every evening, wherever they had dined, they

might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the balustrade of

the Alhambra promenade.