There would be still more animation, and still more enthusiasm when Anthony came home.

Frances prided herself on her power of foreseeing things.  She foresaw that Anthony would come home early for his game.  She foresaw the funny, nervous agony of his face when he appeared on the terrace and caught sight of Grannie and the three Aunties, and the elaborate and exquisite politeness with which he would conceal from them his emotion.  She foresaw that she would say to Annie, “When the master comes tell him we’re having tea in the garden, under the tree of—­under the ash-tree” (for after all, he was the master, and discipline must be maintained).  She foresaw the very gestures of his entrance, the ironically solemn bow that he would make to her, far-off, from the terrace; she even foresaw the kind of joke that, for the life of him, he would not be able to help making.  She was so made that she could live happily in this world of small, foreseen things.

III

And it all happened as she had foreseen.

Anthony came home early, because it was a fine afternoon.  He made the kind of joke that calamity always forced from him, by some perversion of his instincts.

“When is an ash-tree not an ash-tree?  When it’s a tree of Heaven.”

He was exquisitely polite to Grannie and the Aunties, and his manner to Frances, which she openly complained of, was, he said, what a woman brought on herself when she reserved her passion for her children, her sentiment for trees of Heaven, and her mockery for her devoted husband.

“I suppose we can have some tennis now,” said Auntie Louie.

“Certainly,” said Anthony, “we can, and we shall.”  He tried not to look at Frances.

And Auntie Edie became automatically animated.

“I can’t serve for nuts, but I can run.  Who’s going to play with me?”

“I am,” said Anthony.  He was perfect.

The game of tennis had an unholy and terrible attraction for Auntie Louie and Auntie Edie.  Neither of them could play.  But, whereas Auntie Louie thought that she could play and took tennis seriously, Auntie Edie knew that she couldn’t and took it as a joke.

Auntie Louie stood tall and rigid and immovable.  She planted herself, like a man, close up to the net, where Anthony wanted to be, and where he should have been; but Auntie Louie said she was no good if you put her to play back; she couldn’t be expected to take every ball he missed.

When Auntie Louie called out “Play!” she meant to send a nervous shudder through her opponents, shattering their morale.  She went through all the gestures of an annihilating service that for some reason never happened.  She said the net was too low and that spoiled her eye.  And when she missed her return it was because Anthony had looked at her and put her off.  Still Aunt Louie’s attitude had this advantage that it kept her quiet in one place where Anthony could dance round and round her.