o be Auntie Louie's favourite.
If you taxed her with it she was indignant and declared that she was
sure she wasn't.

And again Frances knew what Louie meant--that she loved her three sons,
Michael and Nicholas and John, with passion, and her one daughter,
Dorothea, with critical affection. That was the sort of thing that Louie
was always saying and thinking about people, and nobody ever paid the
slightest attention to what Louie said or thought. Frances told herself
that if there was one emotion that she was more free from than another
it was sex jealousy.

The proof of it, which she offered now, was that she had given up
Dorothy to Anthony. It was natural that he should care most for the
little girl.

Louie said that was easy--when she knew perfectly well that Anthony
didn't. Like Frances he cared most for his three sons. She was leaving
Dorothy to Anthony so that Anthony might leave Michael and Nicholas
to her.

"You might just as well say," Frances said, "that I'm in love with
John-John. Poor little Don-Don!"

"I might," said Louie, "just as well."

Grannie said she was sure she didn't understand what they were talking
about and that Louie had some very queer ideas in her head.

"Louie," she said, "knows more than I do."

Frances thought: Was Grannie really stupid? Was she really innocent? Was
she not, rather, clever, chock-full of the secret wisdom and the secret
cruelty of sex?

Frances was afraid of her thoughts. They came to her not like thoughts,
but like quick rushes of her blood, partly confusing her. She did not
like that.

She thought: Supposing Grannie knew all the time that Emmy was unhappy,
and took a perverse pleasure in her knowledge? Supposing she was not
really soft and gentle? She could be soft and gentle to her, because of
her children and because of Anthony. She respected Anthony because he
was well-off and efficient and successful, and had supported her ever
since Grandpapa had gone bankrupt. She was proud of Frances because she
was Anthony's wife, who had had three sons and only one daughter.

Grannie behaved as if her grandchildren were her own children, as if she
had borne three Sons and only one daughter, instead of four daughters
and only one son. Still, Frances was the vehicle of flesh and blood that
carried on her flesh and blood in Michael and Nicholas and John. She
respected Frances.

But Frances could remember a time when she had been unmarried like her
sisters, and whe