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.
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