It was all nonsense.  She didn’t really believe that these things happened.  Yet, why not?  Michael said they happened.  Even Dorothy, who didn’t believe in God and immortality or anything, believed that.

She gave it up; it was beyond her; it bothered her.

“Yes.  Seventy-nine her last birthday.”

Mrs. Norris had said that Mrs. Fleming was wonderful.

Frances thought:  “It’s wonderful what Veronica does to them.”

* * * * *

The sets had changed.  Nicholas and a girl friend of Veronica’s played against George Vereker and Miss Lathom; John, with Mr. Jervis for his handicap, played against Anthony and Mr. Norris.  The very young Norris fielded.  All afternoon he had hoped to distinguish himself by catching some ball in full flight as it went “out.”  It was a pure and high ambition, for he knew he was so young and unimportant that only the eyes of God and of his mother watched him.

Michael had dropped out of it.  He sat beside Dorothy under the tree of Heaven and watched Veronica.

“Veronica’s wonderful,” he said.  “Did you see that?”

Dorothy had seen.

Veronica had kept Aunt Emmeline quiet all afternoon.  She bad made Bartie eat an ice under the impression that it would be good for him.  And now she had gone with Morrie to the table where the drinks were, and had taken his third glass of champagne cup from him and made him drink lemonade instead.

“How does she do it?” said Michael.

“I don’t know.  She doesn’t know herself.  I used to think I could manage people, but I’m not in it with Ronny.  She ought to be a wardress in a lunatic asylum.”

“Now look at that!”

Veronica had returned to the group formed by Grannie and the Aunties and some strangers.  The eyes of the four Fleming women had looked after her as she went from them; they looked towards her now as if some great need, some great longing were appeased by her return.

Grannie made a place by her side for the young girl; she took her arm, the young white arm, bare from the elbow in its short sleeve, and made it lie across her knees.  From time to time Grannie’s yellow, withered hand stroked the smooth, warm white arm, or held it.  Emmeline and Edith squatted on the grass at Veronica’s feet; their worn faces and the worn face of Louie looked at her.  They hung on her, fascinated, curiously tranquillized, as if they drank from her youth.

“It’s funny,” Dorothy said, “when you think how they used to hate her.”

“It’s horrible,” said Michael.

He got up and took Veronica away.

He was lying at her feet now on the grass in the far corner of the lawn under the terrace.

“Why do you go to them?” he said.

“Because they want me.”

“You mustn’t go when they want you.  You mustn’t let them get hold of you.”

“They don’t get hold of me—­nothing gets hold of me.  I want to help them.  They say it does them good to have me with them.”