It was a relief to be seated inside the tram and free of Stacpole Terrace. It was pleasant to change cars at the Nag's Head and behold again the well-known landscape of Highbury. A pageant of childish memories, roused by the sight of the broad pavements of Islington, was marshalled in Jenny's brain. Somehow on the visits she had paid her home during the last year these aspects were obscured by the consciousness of no longer owning any right to them. Now, really going home, she turned into Hagworth Street with a glow of pride at seeing again its sobriety and dignity so evident after the extravagant stucco and Chinese balconies of Camden Town's terraces and squares. There was Seventeen, looking just the same, prophetic of refuge and solid comfort to the exile. She wondered what freak of folly had ever made her fancy home was dingy and unpleasant, home that held her bright-eyed mother's laugh, her absurd father always amusing, and her little sister May. Home was an enchanted palace with more romance in each dear room than was to be found elsewhere in the world. Home was alive with the past and preserved the links which bound together all the detached episodes of Jenny's life. As she turned into the garden that once had seemed a district, as she rattled the letter-box--in the days of her estrangement she always rang the bell--remorse came welling up in tears. She remembered what good times had been recurrent through the past, tea-parties and pantomimes and learning to ride a bicycle in the warm sunsets of June. And in the house opposite nothing was altered, not a fold of the lace curtains, not a leaf of the dusty aspidistra that took all the light in the ground-floor window. What a long time they were opening the door. She rattled the letter-box again and called out to May. It was like coming home after summer holidays by the blue sparkling sea, coming home to dolls and toys and the long, thin garden at the back which from absence had acquired an exaggerated reputation for entertainment. Suddenly May opened the door, peeping round over the latch, much scared apparently. "How quick you've been," she said. "Quick?" repeated Jenny. "Didn't you get my telegram?" "No," said Jenny, and perceiving that May's eyes were red with weeping, her delightful anticipation was clouded with dread. "What did you want to telegraph for? Not--not about mother?" May nodded. "She isn't dead?" Jenny gasped. "No, she isn't dead. But she's had to be took away. You know. To an asylum." "Go on," said Jenny. "Oh, what a dreadful thing." "Well, don't stand there," May commanded. "There's been crowd enough round here this morning as it is." In the kitchen she unfolded the story. It seemed that for the last fortnight their mother had been queer. "Oh, she was funny," said May. "She used to sit moping over the fire--never doing nothing and saying all the time how her head hurt." "Didn't dad fetch in a doctor?" Jenny demanded.