t Grannie; now
Grannie and the three Aunties were united against Frances.

"Frances, you're a foolish woman."

"My folly is my own affair and Anthony's."

"You'll have to pay for it some day."

"You might have thought of your own children first."

"I did. I thought, How would I like _them_ to be forsaken like poor
Ronny?"

"You should have thought of the boys. Michael's growing up; so is
Nicky."

"Nicky is fifteen; Ronny is eleven, if you call that growing up."

"That's all very well, but when Nicky is twenty-one and Ronny is
seventeen what are you going to do?"

"I'm not going to turn Ronny out of doors for fear Nicky should fall in
love with her, if that's what you mean."

"It _is_ what I mean, now you've mentioned it."

"He's less likely to fall in love with her if I bring them up as
brother and sister."

"You might think of Anthony. Bartholomew's wife leaves him for another
man, and you aid and abet her by taking her child, relieving her of her
one responsibility."

"Bartie's wife leaves him, and we help Bartie by taking care of his
child--who is _our niece_, not yours."

"My dear Frances, that attitude isn't going to deceive anybody. If you
don't think of Anthony and your children, you might think of us. We
don't want to be mixed up in this perfectly horrible affair."

"How are you mixed up in it?"

"Well, after all, Frances, we are the family. We are your sisters and
your mother and your children's grand-mother and aunts."

"Then," said Frances with decision, "you must try to bear it. You must
take the rough with the smooth, as Anthony and I do."

And as soon as she had said it she was sorry. It struck her for the
first time that her sisters were getting old. It was no use for Auntie
Louie, more red and more rigid than ever, to defy the imminence of her
forty-ninth birthday. Auntie Emmy's gestures, her mouthings and
excitement, only drew attention to the fact that she was forty-seven.
And Edie, why, even poor little Auntie Edie was forty-five. Grannie, dry
and wiry, hardly looked older than Auntie Edie.

They left her, going stiffly, in offence. And again the unbearable
pathos of them smote her. The poor Aunties. She was a brute to hurt
them. She still thought of them as Auntie Louie, Auntie Emmy, Auntie
Edie. It seemed kinder; for thus she bestowed upon them a colour and
vitality that, but for her and for her children, they would not have
had. They were helpless, tiresome, utterly ineffic