Michael's message was that Mummy sent her love, and would Grannie and
Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie come to tea? She was
going to have tea in the garden, and would they please come early? As
early as possible. That was the part he was not to forget.

The queer thing was that when Michael went to see Grannie and the
Aunties in Grannie's house he saw four old women. They wore black
dresses that smelt sometimes of something sweet and sometimes like your
fingers when you get ink on them. The Aunties looked cross; and Auntie
Emmeline smelt as if she had been crying. He thought that perhaps they
had not been able to stop crying since Grandpapa's funeral. He thought
that was why Auntie Louie's nose was red and shiny and Auntie Edie's
eyelids had pink edges instead of lashes. In Grannie's house they never
let you do anything. They never did anything themselves. They never
wanted to do anything; not even to talk. He thought it was because they
knew that Grandpapa was still there all the time.

But outside it the Aunties were not so very old. They rode bicycles. And
when they came to Michael's Father's house they forgot all about
Grandpapa's funeral and ran about and played tennis like Michael's
mother and Mrs. Jervis, and they talked a lot.

Michael's mother was Grannie's child. To see how she could be a child
you had only to think of her in her nightgown with her long brown hair
plaited in a pigtail hanging down her back and tied with a blue ribbon.
But he couldn't see how the three Aunties could be Grannie's other
children. They were bigger than Grannie and they had grey hair. Grannie
was a little thing; she was white and dry; and she had hair like hay.
Besides, she hardly ever took any notice of them except to make a face
at Auntie Emmeline or Auntie Edie now and then. She did it with her head