He had not given a dinner-party for months.

This dinner in honour of June's engagement had seemed a bore at first (among Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the repast over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.
And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service, but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed: "Mrs.Chessman, Mrs.Septimus Small!" Two ladies advanced.

The one in front, habited entirely in red, had large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard, dashing eye.

She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long, primrose-coloured glove: "Well! Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages.

How are you?
Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!" The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion.