“Clever?”

“As clever as you like—­a bit—­a bit up in the air!”

He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built, nor what his charges were.  The impression he gathered was that he would be able to make his own terms.  The more he reflected on the idea, the more he liked it.  It would be keeping the thing in the family, with Forsytes almost an instinct; and he would be able to get ‘favoured-nation,’ if not nominal terms—­only fair, considering the chance to Bosinney of displaying his talents, for this house must be no common edifice.

Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to bring the young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a thorough optimist when there was anything to be had out of it.

Bosinney’s office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that he would be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.

Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if her greatest friend’s lover were given the job.  June’s marriage might depend on it.  Irene could not decently stand in the way of June’s marriage; she would never do that, he knew her too well.  And June would be pleased; of this he saw the advantage.

Bosinney looked clever, but he had also—­and—­it was one of his great attractions—­an air as if he did not quite know on which side his bread were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in money matters.  Soames made this reflection in no defrauding spirit; it was the natural attitude of his mind—­of the mind of any good business man—­of all those thousands of good business men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate Hill.

Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class—­of human nature itself—­when he reflected, with a sense of comfort, that Bosinney would be easy to deal with in money matters.

While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept fixed on the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by the dome of St. Paul’s.  It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments.  The attraction for him of this great church was inexplicable, unless it enabled him to concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day.  If any affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with mouse-like attention from epitaph to epitaph.  Then retiring in the same noiseless way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a thought more of dogged purpose in his gait, as though he had seen something which he had made up his mind to buy.

He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument to monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings of the walls, and remained motionless.