The Spring of the Year by Elfrida Vipont

Title:  The Spring of the Year (Haverard Family #3)
Author:  Elfrida Vipont
Illustrator: T.R. Freeman
Publication: Oxford University Press, hardcover, 1957
Genre: Children’s/series

Plot: The Spring of the Year continues the story of the Haverard family featured in The Lark in the Morn and The Lark on the Wing but focuses on Kit Haverard’s niece, Laura.  Laura is the fourth and sometimes difficult child of Kit’s older brother Richard and his wife Sylvia (aka Flip), the prefect who was kind to Kit when she was being bullied at Heryot.  Richard is an academic like his father and has just got a department chair at a university in Fairleigh, so the family is reluctantly leaving Oxford. Heading to Fairleigh to house-hunt, they detour to St. Merlyon, a big village with a small but inviting Quaker Meeting House and a beautiful Priory Church.  Laura and her brother Christopher are enchanted by the area and attracted to the house for sale next to Ye Olde Priory Cake and Bunne Shoppe.  Soon, the Haverards have moved in.   While the twins, Richenda and Philippa (born in The Lark on the Wing), are at boarding school at Heryot and brainy Mary at the local grammar school, Laura and her younger brother Christopher attend the village school with Kate Whittacker, whose mother runs the tea shop.   The move takes place in late summer and spring is eventful, with the grammar school examination for Laura and Kate, a local drama production in which Laura gets a significant part, and a growing friendship with Peter Bellamy, haunted by the death of his parents in an auto accident. 

The Lark on the Wing by Elfrida Vipont

Title: The Lark on the Wing (Haverard Family #2)
Author: Elfrida Vipont
Publication: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1970 (original UK publication 1950)
Genre: Middle-grade fiction/series

US cover

Plot: When Kit Haverard finishes school, she finally knows that she wants to study singing professionally but her overbearing cousin Laura insists she take a secretarial course instead so Kit can eventually help her father with his history books (query: who has been doing this all these years?  Laura?  Is Professor Haverard paying a secretary?).  Eventually, Kit does escape to London where she obtains a secretarial job at Quaker headquarters and an apartment (a fourth-floor walk-up but it’s in the very nice Marylebone neighborhood which I visited on my last trip to London - good luck affording it these days) which she shares with childhood friends Helen and Pony.  Next door are Bob, a colleague of Miles and his younger brother Felix, who also sings.   Kit arranges lessons with her mother’s old music teacher, Papa Andreas, who is retired but still works with a few favorite students (he also seems to have quite the ménage living at his little house near Kensington Palace: his cousin Tante Anna; Lotte, the mysterious cook/housekeeper; and Miss Fishwick, who taught Kit piano at Heryot, and is an accomplished pianist).  Kit’s friend Terry Chauntesinger has become a highly regarded singer:

The Lark in the Morn by Elfrida Vipont

Title: The Lark in the Morn (Haverard Family #1)
Author: Elfrida Vipont
Publication: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1970 (original UK publication 1948)
Genre: Middle grade fiction/series

UK paperback edition