pable that the flannels
were ruined. Still, if he hadn't found that confounded cat, they would
never, humanly speaking, have had their tennis.

The Aunties did not see Mr. Vereker climbing into the tree of Heaven.
They did not see him playing with Mr. Parsons and Anthony and Mr.
Norris. For as soon as the three young men appeared, and Emmeline and
Edith began to be interested and emphatic, Grannie said that as they
wouldn't see anything more of Frances and the children, it was no good
staying any longer, and they'd better be getting back. It was as if she
knew that they were going to enjoy themselves and was determined to
prevent it.

Frances went with them to the bottom of the lane. She stood there till
the black figures had passed, one by one, through the white posts on to
the Heath, till, in the distance, they became small again and harmless
and pathetic.

Then she went back to her room where Nicky lay in the big bed.

* * * * *

Nicky lay in the big bed with Jane on one side of him and his
steam-engine on the other, and a bag of hot salt against each ear. Now
and then a thin wall of sleep slid between him and his earache.

Frances sat by the open window and looked out into the garden where
Anthony and Norris played, quietly yet fiercely, against Vereker and
Parsons. Frances loved the smell of fresh grass that the balls and the
men's feet struck from the lawn; she loved the men's voices subdued to
Nicky's sleep, and the sound of their padding feet, the thud of the
balls on the turf, the smacking and thwacking of the rackets. She loved
every movement of Anthony's handsome, energetic body; she loved the
quick, supple bodies of the young men, the tense poise and earnest
activity of their adolescence. But it was not Vereker or Parsons or
Norris that she loved or that she saw. It was Michael, Nicholas and John
whose adolescence was foreshadowed in those athletic forms wearing white
flannels; Michael, Nicky and John, in white flannels, playing fiercely.
When young Vereker drew himself to his full height, when his young body
showed lean and slender as he raised his arms for his smashing service,
it was not young Vereker, but Michael, serious and beautiful. When young
Parsons leaped high into the air and thus returned Anthony's facetious
sky-scraper on the volley, that was Nicky. When young Norris turned and
ran at the top of his speed, and overtook the ball on its rebound from
the base