Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and depressed.  And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that he had only eighteen-pence.  One couldn’t dine off eighteen-pence, and he was very hungry.  He looked longingly at the windows of the Iseeum Club, where he had often eaten of the best with his father!  Those pearls!  There was no getting over them!  But the more he brooded and the further he walked the hungrier he naturally became.  Short of trailing home, there were only two places where he could go—­his grandfather’s in Park Lane, and Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road.  Which was the less deplorable?  At his grandfather’s he would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the moment.  At Timothy’s they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected you, not otherwise.  He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance to tip him was hardly fair to either of them.  His mother would hear he had been there, of course, and might think it funny; but he couldn’t help that.  He rang the bell.

“Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d’you think?”

“They’re just going in, Master Val.  Mr. Forsyte will be very glad to see you.  He was saying at lunch that he never saw you nowadays.”

Val grinned.

“Well, here I am.  Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let’s have fizz.”

Warmson smiled faintly—­in his opinion Val was a young limb.

“I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val.”

“I say,” Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, “I’m not at school any more, you know.”

Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the stag’s-horn coat stand, with the words: 

“Mr. Valerus, ma’am.”

“Confound him!” thought Val, entering.

A warm embrace, a “Well, Val!” from Emily, and a rather quavery “So there you are at last!” from James, restored his sense of dignity.

“Why didn’t you let us know?  There’s only saddle of mutton.  Champagne, Warmson,” said Emily.  And they went in.

At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so many fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at the other, Val half-way between them; and something of the loneliness of his grandparents, now that all their four children were flown, reached the boy’s spirit.  ’I hope I shall kick the bucket long before I’m as old as grandfather,’ he thought.  ‘Poor old chap, he’s as thin as a rail!’ And lowering his voice while his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion about sugar in the soup, he said to Emily: 

“It’s pretty brutal at home, Granny.  I suppose you know.”

“Yes, dear boy.”

“Uncle Soames was there when I left.  I say, isn’t there anything to be done to prevent a divorce?  Why is he so beastly keen on it?”

“Hush, my dear!” murmured Emily; “we’re keeping it from your grandfather.”