Roger made no reply.
“I call her distinguished-looking,” he said at last—it was the highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary. “That young Bosinney will never do any good for himself. They say at Burkitt’s he’s one of these artistic chaps—got an idea of improving English architecture; there’s no money in that! I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it.”
They entered the station.
“What class are you going? I go second.”
“No second for me,” said Nicholas;—“you never know what you may catch.”
He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to South Kensington. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:
“Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!”
And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
“Cantankerous chap Roger—always was!”
There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they to be sentimental?