nearer, when she saw them climbing the slope below the garden and
the lane.



II

Grannie took a long time crossing the lawn from the door in the lane to
the tree of Heaven.

She came first. Her daughters followed, forced to her slow pace,
advancing with an air of imperfect cohesion, of not really belonging to
each other, as if they had been strangers associated by some accident.
It had grown on them in their efforts to carry off the embarrassment of
appearing as an eternal trio. Auntie Louie carried it off best. Sharp
and rigid, Auntie Louie's figure never lent itself to any group. But for
her black gown she really might not have belonged.

Mrs. Fleming went slowly, not because she was old, for she was only
sixty, but because, though she said, and thought, that she was wrapped
up in Frances and her children, she was still absorbed, fascinated by
her sacred sense of bereavement. She moved as if hypnotized by her
own sorrow.

To her three unmarried daughters she behaved with a sort of mystic
hostility, a holy detachment and displeasure, as if she suspected them
of getting over it, or of wanting to get over it if they could. But to
her one married daughter and to her grand-children she was soft and
gentle. So that, when they happened to be all together, her moods
changed so rapidly that she seemed a creature of unaccountable caprice.