His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in little horns, never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide mouth, between the fine white whiskers, twitched once or twice; it was easy to see from that anxious rapt expression, whence Soames derived the handicapped look which sometimes came upon his face.  James might have been saying to himself:  ‘I don’t know—­life’s a tough job.’

In this position Bosinney surprised him.

James brought his eyes down from whatever bird’s-nest they had been looking for in the sky to Bosinney’s face, on which was a kind of humorous scorn.

“How do you do, Mr. Forsyte?  Come down to see for yourself?”

It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was made correspondingly uneasy.  He held out his hand, however, saying: 

“How are you?” without looking at Bosinney.

The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.

James scented something suspicious in this courtesy.  “I should like to walk round the outside first,” he said, “and see what you’ve been doing!”

A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three inches to port had been laid round the south-east and south-west sides of the house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould, which was in preparation for being turfed; along this terrace James led the way.

“Now what did this cost?” he asked, when he saw the terrace extending round the corner.

“What should you think?” inquired Bosinney.

“How should I know?” replied James somewhat nonplussed; “two or three hundred, I dare say!”

“The exact sum!”

James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared unconscious, and he put the answer down to mishearing.

On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the view.

“That ought to come down,” he said, pointing to the oak-tree.

“You think so?  You think that with the tree there you don’t get enough view for your money.”

Again James eyed him suspiciously—­this young man had a peculiar way of putting things:  “Well!” he said, with a perplexed, nervous, emphasis, “I don’t see what you want with a tree.”

“It shall come down to-morrow,” said Bosinney.

James was alarmed.  “Oh,” he said, “don’t go saying I said it was to come down!  I know nothing about it!”

“No?”

James went on in a fluster:  “Why, what should I know about it?  It’s nothing to do with me!  You do it on your own responsibility.”

“You’ll allow me to mention your name?”

James grew more and more alarmed:  “I don’t know what you want mentioning my name for,” he muttered; “you’d better leave the tree alone.  It’s not your tree!”

He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.  They entered the house.  Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner court-yard.

“You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here,” he said, after staring at the columns and gallery for some time.  “Now, what did it cost to put up those columns?”