June had wanted him to go away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.
But where was he to go by himself?
He could not go abroad alone; the sea upset his liver; he hated hotels.

Roger went to a hydropathic--he was not going to begin that at his time of life, those new-fangled places we're all humbug! With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his spirit; the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day looking forth with the melancholy which sat so strangely on a face wont to be strong and serene.
And so that afternoon he took this journey through St.John's Wood, in the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes of the acacia's before the little houses, in the summer sunshine that seemed holding a revel over the little gardens; and he looked about him with interest; for this was a district which no Forsyte entered without open disapproval and secret curiosity.
His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff colour which implies a long immunity from paint.

It had an outer gate, and a rustic approach.
He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head, with its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very upright, under an excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a little angry.

He had been driven into this! "Mrs.Jolyon Forsyte at home ?" "Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir ?" Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave his name.

She seemed to him such a funny little toad! And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double, drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the little maid placed him in a chair.
"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat, I'll tell them." Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked around him.
The whole place seemed to him, as he would have expressed it, pokey; there was a certain--he could not tell exactly what--air of shabbiness, or rather of making two ends meet, about everything.