y
walked up and down the terrace path, discussing it. In the distance
Grannie and the Aunties could be seen climbing the slope of the Heath to
Judges' Walk. They were not, Dorothy protested, pathetic; they were
simply beastly. She hated them for worrying her mother.

"They think I oughtn't to have taken Ronny. They think Nicky'll want to
marry her."

"But Ronny's a kid--"

"When she's not a kid."

"He won't, Mummy ducky, he won't. She'll be a kid for ages. Nicky'll
have married somebody else before she's got her hair up."

"Then Ronny'll fall in love with _him_, and get her little heart
broken."

"She won't, Mummy, she won't. They only talk like that because they
think Ferdie's Ronny's father."

"Dorothy!"

Frances, in horror, released herself from that protecting arm. The
horror came, not from the fact, but from her daughter's knowledge of it.

"Poor Mummy, didn't you know? That's why Bartie hates her."

"It isn't true."

"What's the good of that as long as Bartie thinks it is?" said Dorothy.

"London Bridge is broken down
(_Ride over my Lady Leigh_!)"

Veronica was in the drawing-room, singing "London Bridge."

Michael, in all the beauty of his adolescence, lay stretched out on the
sofa, watching her. Her small, exquisite, childish face between the
plaits of honey-coloured hair, her small, childish face thrilled him
with a singular delight and sadness. She was so young and so small, and
at the same time so perfect that Michael could think of her as looking
like that for ever, not growing up into a tiresome, bouncing, fluffy
flapper like Rosalind Jervis.

Aunt Louie and Aunt Emmeline said that Rosalind was in love with him.
Michael thought that was beastly of them and he hoped it wasn't true.

"'Build it up with gold so fine'"--

Veronica was happy; for she knew herself to be a cause of happiness.
Like Frances once, she was profoundly aware of her own happiness, and
for the same reason. It was, if you came to think of it, incredible. It
had been given to her, suddenly, when she was not looking for it, after
she had got used to unhappiness.

As long as she could remember Veronica had been aware of herself. Aware
of herself, chiefly, not as a cause of happiness, but as a cause of
embarrassment and uncertainty and trouble to three people, her father,
her mother and Ferdie, just as they were causes of embarrassment and
trouble and uncertainty to her. They lived in a sort of violent my