“Nobody’s happy because of being married,” Sylvia enunciated, rather sententiously.
“What nonsense you talk, and you’re only just eighteen!”
“That’s why I talk nonsense,” Sylvia said, “but all the same it’s very true nonsense. You and Lennie couldn’t have ever been anything but happy.”
“Darling Lennie, I think it must be because he’s so stupid. I wonder if he’s smoking in bed. He always does if I leave him to go and talk to anybody. Good night, dear.”
Sylvia returned to her book, wondering more than ever how she could have supposed a year ago that she could follow Victoria Worsley along the pathway of her simple and happy life.
The whole family from Arbour End came to London for the ten days before term began, and Sylvia stayed with them at a hotel. Gladys and Enid had to get their new frocks, and certain gaps in Hercules’s education had to be filled up, such as visiting the Zoo and the Tower of London and the Great Wheel at Earl’s Court. Sylvia and the twins searched in vain for the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, but they found Mabel selling Turkish Delight by herself at a small stall in another part of the Exhibition. Sylvia thought the best way of showing her penitence for the heartless way she had treated her was to buy as much Turkish Delight as could possibly be carried away, since she probably received a percentage on the takings. Mabel seemed to bear no resentment, but she was rather shy, because she mistook the twins for Sylvia’s sisters-in-law and therefore avoided the only topic upon which she could talk freely, which was men. They left the florid and accommodating creature with a callow youth who was leaning familiarly across the counter and smacking with a cane his banana-colored boots; then they ate as much Turkish Delight as they could and divided the rest among some ducks and the Kaffirs in the kraal.
Sylvia also visited Hornton House and explained to Miss Ashley why she had demanded the banishment of Gertrude from Green Lanes.
“Poor Gertrude, she was very much upset,” Miss Ashley said.
Sylvia, softened by the memories of a so happy year that her old school evoked, made up her mind not to carry on the war against Gertrude. She felt, too, a greater charity toward Philip, who, after all, had been the cause of her being given that so happy year, and she went back to Hampshire with the firm intention of encouraging this new mood that the last four months had created in her. Philip was waiting on the platform and was so glad to see her again that he drove even more absent-mindedly than usual, until she took the reins from him and whipped up the horse with a quite positive anticipation of home.
Sylvia learned from Philip that the visit of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had influenced other lives than their own, for it seemed that Miss Horne’s announcement of their attendance in future at Mr. Dorward’s empty church had been fully carried out. Not a Sunday passed but that they drove up in the governess-car to Mass, so Philip said with a wry face for the word; what was more, they stayed to lunch with the vicar, presided at the Sunday-school, and attended the evening service, which had been put forward half an hour to suit their supper.