an underwriter at Lloyd’s, he had regained prosperity before his artistic talent had outcropped.  But having—­as the simple say —­“learned” his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew that Jon would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion that his aversion from everything else meant that he was going to be a writer.  Holding, however, the view that experience was necessary even for that profession, there seemed to Jolyon nothing in the meantime, for Jon, but University, travel, and perhaps the eating of dinners for the Bar.  After that one would see, or more probably one would not.  In face of these proffered allurements, however, Jon had remained undecided.

Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolyon a doubt whether the world had really changed.  People said that it was a new age.  With the profundity of one not too long for any age, Jolyon perceived that under slightly different surfaces the era was precisely what it had been.  Mankind was still divided into two species:  The few who had “speculation” in their souls, and the many who had none, with a belt of hybrids like himself in the middle.  Jon appeared to have speculation; it seemed to his father a bad lookout.

With something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had heard the boy say, a fortnight ago:  “I should like to try farming, Dad; if it won’t cost you too much.  It seems to be about the only sort of life that doesn’t hurt anybody; except art, and of course that’s out of the question for me.”

Jolyon subdued his smile, and answered: 

“All right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first Jolyon in 1760.  It’ll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally, no doubt, you may grow a better turnip than he did.”

A little dashed, Jon had answered: 

“But don’t you think it’s a good scheme, Dad?”

“’Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you’ll do more good than most men, which is little enough.”

To himself, however, he had said:  ’But he won’t take to it.  I give him four years.  Still, it’s healthy, and harmless.’

After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Val Dartie, asking if they knew of a farmer near them on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice.  Holly’s answer had been enthusiastic.  There was an excellent man quite close; she and Val would love Jon to live with them.

The boy was due to go to-morrow.

Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolyon gazed through the leaves of the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for thirty-two years.  The tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day older!  So young, the little leaves of brownish gold; so old, the whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk.  A tree of memories, which would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut it down—­would see old England out at the pace things were going!