Mabel did. She arrived looking as pretty and as shifty as ever (the East had hardly affected her peach-bloom complexion), and she was full of stories that proved how besottedly her husband was in love with her. Careful she was, too, to ask what had become of Bob Ranken. Subtly she smiled when she heard that he prospered and that Joanna still had an occasional letter from him.

And from the first Mabel was loud in her applause of the fine new family plans which Georgie and her Max had evolved between them, plans which were based on the separately confidential letters Georgie had lately received from Joanna, Linnet and her mother. (An astute man, this Max. Jewish, by the irony of fate; beautifully considerate and understanding with Juley; giving her a new lease of life by permitting her to regard him in the light of a possible convert; charming her with his persuasive tongue, his oriental, startling intelligent eyes; and exercising to the full upon her that magnetism which only his enemies designated as the making of a clever charlatan. Clearly, even to his enemies, a future lay ahead of this tall and willowy young Hebrew with the curly black beard. And how his Georgie adored him!)

Unfolded, his plans were these.

Joanna was to have her wish and go to London: (absurd that she should neglect the chances of work now offering there!) But she was to go, not merely, not even primarily on her own account. She was to be a forerunner. With Georgie married in London the mother too would surely have to make her home there before long. She must of course take her own time. And while Joanna was finding her feet, and at the same time keeping her eyes open for a suitable house – say in Hampstead (Georgie and he were to be in the Garden Suburb) – no doubt Mrs. Bannerman would be glad to see Linnet comfortably settled in Glasgow where his lot was cast. For the present, a holiday from housekeeping was essential. What was to prevent Mrs. Bannerman from spending the coming six months with her friend Eva? Had it not been her lifelong desire to devote herself to mission work? Her children were now men and women. God had given her energy and leisure. Many years of usefulness doubtless lay before her. In London of all places, later on, when her strength was restored, she could make her choice of congenial work.