It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There was something appalling in the utter helplessness of that position, and the uncertainty as to whether it would ever come to an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more! He suffered torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse than anything was his perception that Da had taken all that time to realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.

When he was let up he remained convinced that Da had done a dreadful thing. Though he did not wish to bear witness against her, he had been compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and say: “Mum, don’t let Da hold me down on my back again.”

His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits of hair⁠—“ couleur de feuille morte ,” as little Jon had not yet learned to call it⁠—had looked at him with eyes like little bits of his brown velvet tunic, and answered:

“No, darling, I won’t.”

She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied; especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where he happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to his father:

“Then, will you tell Da, dear, or shall I? She’s so devoted to him”; and his father’s answer:

“Well, she mustn’t show it that way. I know exactly what it feels like to be held down on one’s back. No Forsyte can stand it for a minute.”