He had thought that yesterday was never going to end. Sitting here all the afternoon and all the evening, with William moving about painfully, stacking what he was to take away in one corner, and what was to be left and sold in another. Mamma had shot in and then shot out again continually, and her voice had been breathless at the number of things left to do, with a high note of anxiety whistling through her sentences. Ever since that day three months ago when she had sent him away that Mabel might deliberate alone with her, the high note had pierced through her conversation. Mabel had come many times since then, almost every day, and lately her voice had grown hard towards him, as if she thought that he was ruining Mamma’s life. But after all he had not made the suggestion first, it had been Mamma a month back who had said quite suddenly, “We are going to London,” and he “To London?” “Will you like that, dear?” Everything inside him had been beating, beating. It was good of her. He had a sinking feeling now, the whole thing was almost too good to be true. Spring was beginning here, and the hot rain that fell in short bursts made the room sticky. They said there was a haze of yellowy green over the black trees. He took off his tie and opened his collar. Nothing had happened in those last three months, nothing had ever happened down here, or rather, nothing always happened. He had thought a good deal and little had come of it, only he had seen God as a great sea into which all goodness drained, and those who were good pumped the goodness out again and watered the desert to make the flowers grow. Trees drew it up. A pretty notion. And all the time expectancy had quivered in the air, making life unbearable, there had been so much going on behind the scenes. Poor William, he had been sad packing yesterday. He was not coming to London, he was too old, and he was retiring on a pension, like old Pinch. That was another thing, all the old people were being left behind to die, and Nan was dead. There would be a new start in London. Poor Nanny, but she was happy, nursing children who had died young. Would she remember him? On her character in heaven “Great experience of blind babies.” Oh, he was so happy to-day. But Mamma would be happy in London, she would meet there all the people she had known in Scotland before she had married, and they both wanted to get away from Barwood. A town would be a great hive of houses where people were born and lived and died bitterly, there would be no dozing as in Norbury. They would be in the centre of things there, they would be on the spot, and the echoes of what was happening that one only heard faintly in these muffled fields would be clear up there, as a gong. Life was only nice in retrospect, and they could look back on the mists that coiled round Barwood and make them into an enchanting memory, with Joan rising through them, attracting a stray glance of the sun, and dispelling the mists a little.