She would like to see the valerian again, though. Mamma said it didn't
grow in Yorkshire.
Funny to be going back to Ilford after Roddy and Papa and Mamma had left
it. Funny to be staying at Five Elms with Uncle Victor. Nice Uncle
Victor, buying the house from Papa and making Dan live with them. That
was to keep him from drinking. Uncle Victor was hurt because Papa and
Mamma would go to Morfe when he wanted you all to live with him. But you
couldn't imagine Emilius and Victor living together or Mamma and Aunt
Lavvy.
Bristol to Paddington. This time next week it would be King's Cross to
Reyburn for Morfe.
She wondered what it would be like. Aunt Bella said it was a
dead-and-alive place. Morfe--Morfe. It did sound rather as if people died
in it. Aunt Bella was angry with Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin for making
Mamma go there. But Aunt Bella had never liked Mrs. Waugh and Miss
Frewin. That was because they had been Mamma's friends at school and not
Aunt Bella's.
She wondered what they would be like, and whether they would disapprove
of her. They would if they believed she had been expelled from Dover and
had broken Mamma's heart. All Mamma's friends thought that.
She didn't mind going to Morfe so much. The awful thing was leaving
Ilford. Ilford was part of Mark, part of her, part of her and Mark
together. There were things they had done that never in all their lives
they could do again. Waldteufel Waltzes played on the old Cramer piano,
standing in its place by the door, waltzes that would never sound the
same in any other place in any other room. And there was the sumach tree.
It would die if you transplanted it.