Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set forth to the river.  Holly, between her brother and her father, felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her.  That they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge and crossed the river to the towing-path.  Slight in build—­for of all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy—­Jolly was rowing ‘Two’ in a trial eight.  He looked very earnest and strenuous.  With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two of the others, but would not have said so for the world.  The river was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still beautiful with colour.  Distinguished peace clung around the old city; Jolyon promised himself a day’s sketching if the weather held.  The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the Barges—­Jolly’s face was very set, so as not to show that he was blown.  They returned across the river and waited for him.

“Oh!” said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, “I had to ask that chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night.  He wanted to give you lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I’d better; then you needn’t go.  I don’t like him much.”

Holly’s rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.

“Why not?”

“Oh!  I don’t know.  He seems to me rather showy and bad form.  What are his people like, Dad?  He’s only a second cousin, isn’t he?”

Jolyon took refuge in a smile.

“Ask Holly,” he said; “she saw his uncle.”

“I liked Val,” Holly answered, staring at the ground before her; “his uncle looked—­awfully different.”  She stole a glance at Jolly from under her lashes.

“Did you ever,” said Jolyon with whimsical intention, “hear our family history, my dears?  It’s quite a fairy tale.  The first Jolyon Forsyte—­at all events the first we know anything of, and that would be your great-great-grandfather—­dwelt in the land of Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an ‘agriculturalist,’ as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an agriculturist—­farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call them, ‘Very small beer.’” He looked at Jolly to see how his lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly’s malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother’s face.

“We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it was before the Industrial Era began.  The second Jolyon Forsyte—­your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset Forsyte—­built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children, and migrated to London town.  It is known that he drank sherry.  We may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon’s wars, and general unrest.  The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon, your grandfather, my dears—­tea merchant and chairman of companies, one of the soundest Englishmen