Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole character of a scene, orplace, or person, so those unconscious artists — the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it was theirsignificant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: “Come,now, should I have paid that visit in that hat?” and each had answered “No!” and some, with more imagination than others,had added: “It would never have come into my head!”

George, on hearing the story, grinned. The hat had obviously been worn as a practical joke! He himself was a connoisseurof such. “Very haughty!” he said, “the wild Buccaneer.”

And this mot, the ‘Buccaneer,’ was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it became the favourite mode of alluding toBosinney.

Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.

“We don’t think you ought to let him, dear!” they had said.

June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little embodiment of will she was: “Oh! what does it matter? Philnever knows what he’s got on!”

No one had credited an answer so outrageous. A man not to know what he had on? No, no! What indeed was this young man,who, in becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon’s acknowledged heiress, had done so well for himself? He was an architect, notin itself a sufficient reason for wearing such a hat. None of the Forsytes happened to be architects, but one of them knewtwo architects who would never have worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in the London season.