and the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King’s Road, Chelsea, and still taking‘lovers’ to dances; Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman. Ofthe third generation there were not very many — young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young Nicholas six already,young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one; St. John Hayman two. But the rest of the sixteen married — Soames, Rachel andCicely of James’ family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger’s; Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas’; Augustus and AnnabelSpender of the Hayman’s — were going down the years unreproduced.

Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were asyet only seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there would be more than a further unconsidered trifleor so. A student of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in accordance with the rate of interest foryour money. Grandfather ‘Superior Dosset’ Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been getting ten per cent. for his,hence ten children. Those ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband Septimus Small had, ofcourse, died almost at once, had averaged from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced accordingly. The twenty-onewhom they produced were now getting barely three per cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied theSettlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them who had been reproduced had seventeen children, or just theproper two and five-sixths per stem.

There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction. A distrust of their earning powers, natural where asufficiency is guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did not die, kept them cautious. If one hadchildren and not much income, the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go down; what was enough for two was not