But a letter which he received next morning from his mother stated, in addition to the fact that Petsy had another of her tiresome bilious attacks (poor lamb), that his father and she thought it right that he should come down to Ashbridge for Christmas.

It conveyed the sense that at this joyful season a truce, probably limited in duration, and, even while it lasted, of the nature of a strongly-armed neutrality, was proclaimed, but the prospect was not wholly encouraging, for Lady Ashbridge added that she hoped Michael would not "go on" vexing his father.

What precisely Michael was expected to do in order to fulfil that wish was not further stated, but he wrote dutifully enough to say that he would come down at Christmas.
But the letter rekindled his dormant sense of there being other people in the world beside his immediate circle; also, indefinably, it gave him the sense that his mother wanted him.

That should be so then, and sequentially he remembered with a pang of self-reproach that he had not as much as indicated his presence in London to Aunt Barbara, or set eyes on her since their meeting in August.

He knew she was in London, since he had seen her name in some paragraph in the papers not long before, and instantly wrote to ask her to dine with him at a near date.