" He didn't
believe in people living beyond seventy, Young Nicholas replied mildly
that the rule didn't seem to apply to the Forsytes. George said he
himself intended to commit suicide at sixty. Young Nicholas, smiling and
stroking a long chin, didn't think his father would like that theory;
he had made a lot of money since he was sixty. Well, seventy was the
outside limit; it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave
their money to their children. Soames, hitherto silent, here joined in;
he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and, lifting
his eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very well for people
who never made money to talk. He himself intended to live as long as he
could. This was a hit at George, who was notoriously hard up.
Bosinney muttered abstractedly "Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the
conversation dropped.
Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by two,
the mourners filed in behind it. This guard of men, all attached to the
dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive and singular sight in
the great city of London, with its overwhelming diversity of life, its
innumerable vocations, pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its
terrible call to individualism.
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