VIII
Her mother had some secret that she couldn’t share. She was wonderful in her pure, high serenity. Surely she had some secret. She said he was closer to her now than he had ever been. And in her correct, precise answers to the letters of condolence Harriett wrote: “I feel that he is closer to us now than he ever was.” But she didn’t really feel it. She only felt that to feel it was the beautiful and proper thing. She looked for her mother’s secret and couldn’t find it.
Meanwhile Mr. Hichens had given them six weeks. They had to decide where they would go: into Devonshire or into a cottage at Hampstead where Sarah Barmby lived now.
Her mother said, “Do you think you’d like to live in Sidmouth, near Aunt Harriett?”
They had stayed one summer at Sidmouth with Aunt Harriett. She remembered the red cliffs, the sea, and Aunt Harriett’s garden stuffed with flowers. They had been happy there. She thought she would love that: the sea and the red cliffs and a garden like Aunt Harriett’s.
But she was not sure whether it was what her mother really wanted. Mamma would never say. She would have to find out somehow.
“Well—what do you think?”
“It would be leaving all your friends, Hatty.”
“My friends—yes. But——”
Lizzie and Sarah and Connie Pennefather. She could live without them. “Oh, there’s Mrs. Hancock.”