He took nearly all himself away.
A few days before his departure--he was just twenty--he burned his love-letters.

They had hung on a file at the top of the kitchen cupboard.

From some of them he had read extracts to his mother.

Some of them she had taken the trouble to read herself.

But most were too trivial.
Now, on the Saturday morning he said: "Come on, Postle, let's go through my letters, and you can have the birds and flowers." Mrs.Morel had done her Saturday's work on the Friday, because he was having a last day's holiday.