Mrs. Beatup, besides the gap in her motherly feelings, missed her terribly about the house. Her sturdy willingness to scrub or clean, her cheery indifference to the little indelicacies of emptying slops or gutting chickens, her unfailing good-humour and bubbling vitality, the rough, tender comfort she gave in hours of sorrow, all made Ivy of a special, irreplaceable value in her mother’s working-day. Nell refused to give up her “teachering,” and spoke obstinately of indentures, and other irrelevant puzzles. Anyhow her squeamishness—she even washed the dishes with a wrinkled nose—and the delicacy of her small soft hands would make her pretty useless in hen-house or kitchen. Mrs. Beatup began to talk of Ivy as much as she thought of her, and soon her family came to find her more of a nuisance now she was away than she had been at home in her most disruptive moments. However, her forgiveness was complete, and the reconciliation was celebrated by a solemn ride in “Ivy’s tram” by all the Beatups. It was during the summer holidays, so Nell was able to go—Mrs. Beatup wore her Dionysian bonnet, and her husband his best Sunday blacks, Harry and Zacky were scrubbed and collared into oafishness, the house was shut up and left in charge of Elphick and Juglery, as it had never been since Tom’s wedding. “Ivy’s tram” was on the line from the Albert Memorial to Ore, and ground its way through dreadful suburbs up Mount Pleasant, past the decayed “residences” of Hastings’ prime, slabbed with stucco and bulging with bow-windows, now all grimed and peeled and darkened, chopped into lodgings and sliced into flats, not the ghost of prosperity but its rotting corpse. The tram ground and screamed and swished on the rails, and Ivy, rosy-faced under her tramwayman’s cap—with its peak over the curl that hid her ear—came forcing her way up the inside for fares, taking from each Beatup its separate penny. She looked exuberantly well, and quite happy again; she also smelled strongly of tram-oil, and Nell’s little nose wrinkled even more than when she had smelt of soapsuds and milk. She had a cheery word for each one of her family, who in their turn sat abashed, holding their tickets stiffly between finger and thumb, their eyes slewed on Ivy as she took other passengers’ fares, answered their questions, trundled them out, bundled them in, pulled the bell, ran up to the roof, changed the sign, and flung a little good-humoured chaff at Bill the motorman when they reached the terminus. She had no time off till late that evening, so when the family had ridden in state to Ore, they rode back again to the Memorial. The parting was a little spoiled by the crowd which was waiting to board the tram and reduced Mrs. Beatup’s farewell embrace into something grabbing and unseemly.