on the pavement he fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.  His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars—­the celebrated Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn’t smoke them as a gift; they wanted the stomach of a horse!

“Adolf!”

“Sare!”

“The new plaid rug!”

He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames he felt sure, had an eye!

“The phaeton hood down; I am going—­to—­drive—­a—­lady!”

A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well—­he was going to drive a lady!  It was like a new beginning to the good old days.

Ages since he had driven a woman!  The last time, if he remembered, it had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as nervous as a cat the whole time, and so put him out of patience that, as he dropped her in the Bayswater Road, he had said:  “Well I’m d—–­d if I ever drive you again!” And he never had, not he!

Going up to his horses’ heads, he examined their bits; not that he knew anything about bits—­he didn’t pay his coachman sixty pounds a year to do his work for him, that had never been his principle.  Indeed, his reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers.  But someone at the Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door—­he always drove grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought—­had called him ‘Four-in-hand Forsyte.’  The name having reached his ears through that fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon’s dead partner, the great driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in the kingdom—­Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up to it.  The name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever driven four-in-hand, or was ever likely to, but because of something distinguished in the sound.  Four-in-hand Forsyte!  Not bad!  Born too soon, Swithin had missed his vocation.  Coming upon London twenty years later, he could not have failed to have become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged to select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief glory of the upper-middle class.  He had literally been forced into land agency.

Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and blinking over his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a slow look round—­Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom at the horses’ heads stood ready to let go; everything was prepared for the signal, and Swithin gave it.  The equipage dashed forward, and before you could say Jack Robinson, with a rattle and flourish drew up at Soames’ door.