“This happened about three weeks ago, but wishing to say nothing unjust I did not tell you of it at once. Now, after much wavering I think I see my way clear. As soon as suitable rooms can be got for Linnet I must come to London. And I must do what you have all so often begged – I now see rightly – I must hand over all the housekeeping to you, if you still feel able for it, and confine myself to certain duties which will lighten your responsibilities. Your frequent affectionate letters and Georgie’s have been a great strength to me in some dark hours, and I feel a growing longing to be with you in that great and wonderful city where so much is being done (do I not read of it continually in my weekly magazines?) to hasten the Coming of His Kingdom which is all my prayer and desire. It will of course take some time to get Linnet comfortably settled here. But we shall go as we are Led, one step at a time. Meanwhile it might be as well – don’t you think? – to be on the look-out for a suitable, quite small house in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath? I should wish, of course, not to be far from Georgie. If possible I’d rather not have a flat, never having fancied one (though I’m told the London people prefer them, and I know they are very different from our Glasgow closes). You need not be told how happy Mother is with a bit of garden to tend. But this may be too much to hope for –”

Joanna read this long letter – and there was much more of it – through to the end with a loving but heavy heart. Though it told her little that was unexpected, she knew now how surely she had come to count upon her mother’s protracted unwillingness to leave Glasgow. The loss of this surety was a blow at her freedom and her new-found happiness. But she felt for Juley, and she was not free from self-reproach. She tried hard to persuade herself that, given entirely new conditions, she and her mother might be able to find a new and happier existence under the same roof.

Anyhow there was but one thing to be done, cost what it might later. She wrote a welcoming, affectionate letter home without delay.

CHAPTER TWO

I