And, with an awful sense of mortality surrounding them, her children had learned that they must be kind because the old people would be gone while they endured and remained.

This Saturday being the last of the season, they had all come; not only the Flemings, but the Jervises and Verekers and Norrises, and Uncle Bartie.  The fine weather alone would have brought them.

Bartie, more morose and irritable than ever, sat under the tree of Heaven and watched the triumphal progress of the Day.  He scowled darkly and sourly at each group in turn; at the young men in white flannels playing tennis; at Mr. and Mr. Jervis and the Verekers and Norrises; at the Flemings, old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith, and the disgraceful Maurice, all five of them useless pensioners on his brother’s bounty; Maurice a thing of battered, sodden flesh hanging loose on brittle bone, a rickety prop for the irreproachable summer suit bought with Anthony’s money.  He scowled at the tables covered with fine white linen, and at the costly silver and old china, at the sandwiches and cakes and ices, and the piled-up fruits and the claret cup and champagne cup glowing and shining in the tall glass jugs, and at the pretty maidservants going to and fro in their accomplished service.

Bartie wondered how on earth Anthony managed it.  His wonder was a savage joy to Bartie.

Mr. Jervis, a heavy, pessimistic man, wondered how they managed it, and Mr. Jervis’s wonder had its own voluptuous quality.  Mr. Vereker and Mr. Norris, who held that a strike was a downright serious matter, also wondered.  But they were sustained by their immense belief in Mr. Anthony.  Mr. Anthony knew what he was doing; he always had known.  A strike might be serious while it lasted, but it didn’t last.  And Mr. Nicholas was in the business now, and Mr. John was coming into it next year, and Mr. Nicholas might be married again by that time; and the chances were that the firm of Harrison and Harrison would last long enough to provide for a young Vereker and a still younger Norris.

In spite of the strike, Mr. and Mrs. Vereker and Mr. and Mrs. Norris, like Frances and Anthony, were extraordinarily cheerful that afternoon.

So were young George Vereker and Miss Lathom.

“I can’t think why I feel so happy,” said Mrs. Vereker to Mrs. Norris.  She was looking at her son George.

“Nor I, either,” said Miss Lathom, who was trying suddenly to look at nothing in particular.

Miss Lathom lied and Mrs. Vereker lied; they knew perfectly well why they were happy.  Each knew that the other lied; each knew that the other knew she knew; and neither of them could have said why she found it so necessary to lie.

And to Frances this happiness of Mrs. Vereker, and of young Vereker and Miss Lathom was significant and delightful, as if she had been personally responsible for it.

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