When he was let up he remained convinced that “Da” had done a dreadful thing. Though he did not wish to bear witnessagainst her, he had been compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and say: “Mum, don’t let ‘Da’ hold me down onmy back again.”

His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits of hair —“couleur de feuille morte,” as little Jonhad not yet learned to call it — had looked at him with eyes like little bits of his brown velvet tunic, and answered:

“No, darling, I won’t.”

She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied; especially when, from under the dining-table atbreakfast, where he happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to his father:

“Then, will you tell ‘Da,’ dear, or shall I? She’s so devoted to him”; and his father’s answer:

“Well, she mustn’t show it that way. I know exactly what it feels like to be held down on one’s back. No Forsyte canstand it for a minute.”

Conscious that they did not know him to be under the table, little Jon was visited by the quite new feeling ofembarrassment, and stayed where he was, ravaged by desire for the mushroom.

Such had been his first dip into the dark abysses of existence. Nothing much had been revealed to him after that, tillone day, having gone down to the cow-house for his drink of milk fresh from the cow, after Garratt had finished milking, hehad seen Clover’s calf, dead. Inconsolable, and followed by an upset Garratt, he had sought “Da”; but suddenly aware thatshe was not the person he wanted, had rushed away to find his father, and had run into the arms of his mother.

“Clover’s calf’s dead! Oh! Oh! It looked so soft!”