obscured by the mist of family gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that
he had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft
grey hat--a soft grey hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a
shapeless crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester,
passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted),
had tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,
disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was disturbed
when it did not move.

Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which
embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those
unconscious artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat;
it was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the
meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: "Come, now,
should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each had answered "No!"
and some, with more imagination than others, had added: "It would never
have come into my head!"

George, on hearing the story, grinned. The hat had obviously been
worn as a practical joke! He himself was a connoisseur of such. "Very
haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."

And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it
became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.

Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.

"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.

June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little embodiment