How it opens
You were Reginald Leyburn, clerk in a shipping house, and you had not seen your father's face in seven years.
The quarrel that sent you south at seventeen had been about a dog, and a debt, and a lie, in that order, and none of the three had ever been mentioned again.
ElspethCome home, Master Reginald. The master is failing, and the house is not a house, and Miss Mysie is alone in it.
Choose
Answer the letter before you answer the quarrel, and take the night train north.
Write first to your father, and give the seven years a chance to end on paper.
Ask your mother's family in London what the quarrel was actually about, since you were a child in it.