would send out Wolseley! Seeing always a little further than other people⁠—whence the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes⁠—he had perceived already that Buller was not the man⁠—“a bull of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn’t look out Ladysmith would fall.” This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was enabled to say to everybody: “I told you so.” During that week of gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas attended so many drills in his corps, the Devil’s Own, that young Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son’s health and was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound. The boy had only just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted. His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the part of his grandson.