'Why is it that I'm left with the impression that you're relieved by this experience?' Mrs. Pascoe asked shrewdly as she put the kettle on the stove, cleared the plates, and served the two of them dessert. 'It wouldn't be because you're afraid to try your wings, would it? Or is there another reason? One I'm sure I could put a name to, without having to think too long and hard about it.'
'Well,' Pamela said reluctantly, 'it's true that I was terrified just going to Berlin. I'm glad Theo was there . . . but-'
'But,' said Mrs. Pascoe, sitting down once more and pouring the tea, 'you were afraid to fail because Theo was there, and you were afraid to succeed because you thought that you'd be in danger of losing him altogether.'
'It wasn't like that!' Pamela told her. 'To tell the truth, my heart just wasn't in it. I enjoy singing in the church choir, but I like it because it feels like . . . like family to me; it feels as though I'm singing in the living-room. But being in a strange city in a huge auditorium, surrounded by all these professional people who have built their lives around something that I just stumbled into by accident . . . I just don't feel that it's the right sort of life for me. I wish-' she reddened at making this admission, and said in a lower voice, 'I wish I'd done better, of course, not for myself but to please Theo, to make him . . . like me.'
Mrs. Pascoe gave her a wry smile that was all-too-knowing. 'Like, eh?' She wisely left it at that.
By late Spring the weather was absolutely glorious, the flowers and flowering trees and shrubs on the estate in full-bloom, the air filled with the smell of rebirth and new life. The entire household made the trip to Haworth to spend a day enjoying a family picnic and the sight of the newly-transformed moor, which had gone from a dead dull brown to every hue of purple: mauve, lilac, maroon, magenta, and myriad other hues and colours that may have had no name. They studiously avoided the town proper, which, now that the weather had warmed up was inundated with tourists, but the surrounding countryside at this time of year was truly glorious.
Some younger relatives of the household staff had come as well: there were several children between the ages of twelve down to an adorable little sweetmeat named Jennie who stole everyone's heart. To Pamela's lasting delight, the child caught her eye, and after a shy moment filled with curious peeks and smiles with one finger in her mouth, came up to Pamela, extended her arms and queried, 'Upeego?' Pamela looked to the child's mother, Anne, a young woman married to a nephew of the Pascoes, who shrugged and said with a smile, 'It's your funeral.'