We couldn't help laughing.
'Four "if's" indeed,' said mother.
But Dorothea didn't laugh; she was too busy cudgelling her brains.
'I've a feeling,' she said, 'that it is a bracing place; that Homer—isn't it a funny name for a woman, it was her surname, and the boys used to call her all manner of nonsense because of it—"Iliad" and "Odyssey" of course,—I've a feeling that Homer wrote something about moors and fresh air. If I could but remember!'
'Would you know it if you heard it?' I said.
'Suppose we got a railway guide and looked at some names?' said mother.
'Is there a railway station there?' I asked.
'Oh yes, I know there is one near, for Homer wrote all that when she asked us to go down for a day. Stay, there's something about English history mixed up with it in my mind. I do believe it's coming. Ring the bell, Jack, dear, and we'll look through an A B C. It's something about putting the fires out at night, you know—the old law.'
'Curfew?' said mother.
'Ye-es, but it's not quite that. But——'