She was afraid to say more than that lest she should show her own wish
before she knew her mother's.

"Aunt Harriett. Yes.... But it's very far away, Hatty. We should be cut
off from everything. Lectures and concerts. We couldn't afford to come up
and down."

"No. We couldn't."

She could see that Mamma did not really want to live in Sidmouth; she
didn't want to be near Aunt Harriett; she wanted the cottage at Hampstead
and all the things of their familiar, intellectual life going on and on.
After all, that was the way to keep near to Papa, to go on doing the
things they had done together.

Her mother agreed that it was the way.

"I can't help feeling," Harriett said, "it's what he would have wished."

Her mother's face was quiet and content. She hadn't guessed.


They left the white house with the green balcony hung out like a
birdcage at the side, and turned into the cottage at Hampstead. The
rooms were small and rather dark, and the furniture they had brought had
a squeezed-up, unhappy look. The blue egg on the marble-topped table was
conspicuous and hateful as it had never been in the Black's Lane
drawing-room. Harriett and her mother looked at it.

"Must it stay there?"