George was a few months younger that Hugo, Mollie a few months older than Guy. George and Hugo were in their first year at Oxford, Mollie and Guy in their third.
They were all together a great deal during the next two years, and the Addingtons came to stay at Yearsly in the vacations.
Once Guy and Hugo went to stay with them in Manchester, and once I did, but that house never seemed to belong to them as their rooms in London did.
When Mollie had finished at college they left the Manchester home and moved to London, to the flat in Chelsea which seemed afterwards so much a part of them and of our life in the next few years.
There had been a suggestion at one time that I should go to college. If my mother had been at home I expect I should have gone; but Cousin Delia had a slight inclination against the idea, and my grandmother also, and as I was undecided myself the balance turned against.
If I could have been there with Mollie it would have been different, but she would have left almost as I arrived, and after she had left I saw much more of her in London; and Hugo I should hardly have seen in term time. To be there with him, and rules keeping us apart, I should have hated; and I had had enough of being in a herd of other girls.
So after Christmas I was sent abroad, to a French family first, and then a German.
I stayed five months with each and came back for the summer in between.
It was dull with those families. I had thought it would be exciting to go abroad, but it wasn’t. They were kind people, but they never left me alone. I was taken about to museums and galleries and looked after all the time. It was almost less free than school.
When I came back, Mollie had left Oxford. She took only three years there, and went on with her biology in London.