“My dear girl,” Michael had said, when shingling came in, “to please me, don’t! Your nuque will be too bristly for kisses.”

“My dear boy,” she had answered, “as if one could help it! You’re always the same with any new fashion!”

She had been one of the first twelve to shingle, and was just feeling that without care she would miss being one of the first twelve to grow some hair again. Marjorie Ferrar, ‘the Pet of the Panjoys,’ as Michael called her, already had more than an inch. Somehow, one hated being distanced by Marjorie Ferrar…

Advancing to her father, she said:

“I’ve asked a young American to stay, Dad; Jon Forsyte has married his sister, out there. You’re quite brown, darling. How’s mother?”

Soames only gazed at her.

And Fleur passed through one of those shamed moments, when the dumb quality of his love for her seemed accusing the glib quality of her love for him. It was not fair—she felt—that he should look at her like that; as if she had not suffered in that old business with Jon more than he; if she could take it lightly now, surely he could! As for Michael—not a word! – not even a joke! She bit her lips, shook her shingled head, and passed into the ‘bimetallic parlour.’

Dinner began with soup and Soames deprecating his own cows for not being Herefords. He supposed that in America they had plenty of Herefords?

Francis Wilmot believed that they were going in for Holsteins now.

“Holsteins!” repeated Soames. “They’re new since my young days. What’s their colour?”

“Parti-coloured,” said Francis Wilmot. “The English grass is just wonderful.”

“Too damp, with us,” said Soames. “We’re on the river.”

“The river Thames? What size will that be, where it hasn’t a tide?”

“Just there—not more than a hundred yards.”