"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come to me

at once. Of course, I'll always pay them. But you might remember that

one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays one's own way. And

don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"

And Jolly had said:

"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.

"And there's just one other thing. I don't know much about morality and

that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything

to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is

absolutely necessary."

Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed his

father's hand. And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the right to

say that?' He always had a sort of dread of losing the dumb confidence

they had in each other; remembering how for long years he had lost his

own father's, so that there had been nothing between them but love at a

great distance. He under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit

of the age since he himself went up to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps

he underestimated, too, his boy's power of understanding that he was

tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and possibly

his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards June so queerly

defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly

well; wanted things so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed,

often dropped them like a hot potato. Her mother had been like that,

whence had come all those tears. Not that his incompatibility with his

daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young

Jolyon. One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife's

case one could not be amused. To see June set her heart and jaw on a

thing until she got it was all right, because it was never anything

which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's liberty--the one thing on

which his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a considerable jaw, under

that short grizzling beard. Nor was there ever any necessity for real

heart-to-heart encounters. One could break away into irony--as indeed

he often had to. But the real trouble with June was that she had never

appealed to his aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with

her red-gold hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the

Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft and

quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere. He

watched this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with

extraordinary interest. Would she come out a swan? With her sallow oval

face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark lashes, she might, or

she might not. Only this last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she

would be a swan--rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic

swan. She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the

excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her continuous

reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Tayleurs,' to another

family whose bosom would now be agitated by her reminiscences of the

'well-brrred little Forsytes.' She had taught Holly to speak French like

herself.




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