"But now I"ve got a disappointment for you," said Margaret. "Pauline and Monica are going into Oxford to-day for a week."
"You won"t tell anybody what I"ve told you?" he begged.
"Of course not. Secrets are much too fascinating not to be kept as long as possible."
He opened the wicket, and presently they parted in the High Street.
"I shall come in this afternoon," he called after her. "Unless you"re bored with me."
She invited him with her m.u.f.f and seemed to float out of sight.
Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated arbours. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the Spring, saluted the vestal day.
_February_
Pauline started to Oxford with Monica, feeling rather disappointed she had not seen Guy before she went; for Margaret had come home with news of having walked with him to Fairfield, and it was tantalizing, indeed a little disturbing, to leave him behind with Margaret.
"Nothing is said to Margaret," Pauline protested at lunch, "when _she_ goes out for a walk with Guy. Father, don"t you think it"s unfair?"
"Well, darling Pauline," interrupted Mrs. Grey with an anxious glance towards her second daughter. "You see, Margaret is in a way engaged."
"I"m not engaged," Margaret declared.
"But I"m asking Father," Pauline persisted. "Father, don"t you think it"s unfair?"
The Rector was turning over the pages of a seed-catalogue and answered Pauline"s question with that engaging irrelevancy to which his family and parish were accustomed.
"It"s disgraceful for these people to offer seeds of Incarvillea Olgae.
My dears, you remember that anaemic magenta brute, the colour of a washed-out shirt? Ah," he sighed, "I wish they"d get that yellow Incarvillea over. I am tempted to fancy it might be as good as Tecoma Smithii, and of course coming from that Yang-tse-kiang country, it would be hardy."
"Francis dear!" Pauline cried. "Don"t you think it"s unfair?"
"Pauline," said her mother. "You must _not_ call your father Francis in the dining-room."
The Rector oblivious of everything continued to turn slowly the pages of his catalogue.
"Oh, bother going to Oxford," said Monica looking out of the window to where Janet with frozen breath listened for the omnibus under gathering snow clouds.
"Now, really," Pauline exclaimed, diverted from her complaint of Margaret"s behaviour by another injustice. "Isn"t Monica too bad? She"s grumbling, though it was she who made the plan to stay with the Strettons. And though they"re her friends and not mine, I"ve been made to go too."
"Well, I hate staying with people," Monica explained.
"So do I," said Pauline. "And you accepted the invitation for me that day you were in Oxford buying Christmas presents, when you forgot to buy the patience-cards I wanted to give poor Miss Verney, so that I had to give her a horrid little china dog though she hates dogs."
"Now I"m sure it"ll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there,"
Mrs. Grey affirmed hopefully.
"Oh, how glad I am I"m not going," said Margaret.
"I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her.
"They"re not my friends," Margaret replied with a shrug.
"No, but they"re more your friends than mine," Pauline argued. "Because you"re nearer to Monica. They"re four years off being my friends and only two from being yours."
"Miss Monica," said Janet coming into the room. "The bus has come out from the King"s Head yard, and you"ll be late."
There was instantly a confusion of preparation by Mrs. Grey and Pauline, while Monica sighed at the trouble of departure and Margaret with exasperating indifference sat warm and triumphant by the fire.
"Good gracious," the Rector exclaimed, flinging the catalogue down and speaking loud enough to be heard over the feverish search for Pauline"s left glove. "These people have the impudence to advertize Penstemon Lobbii as a novelty when it"s really our old friend Breviflorus. What on earth is to be done with these scoundrels?"
The horn of the omnibus sounded at the end of Rectory Lane; and the fat guard was marching through the snow with the girls" luggage. The good-byes were all said; and presently Pauline with her m.u.f.f held close to her cheeks against the North wind was sitting on top of the omnibus that was toiling up the Shipcot road. As she caught sight of Plashers Mead etched upon the white scene, she wished she had left a message with Margaret to say in what deep disgrace Guy was. On they laboured across five miles of snow-stilled country with spa.r.s.e flakes melting upon the horses" flanks and never a wayfarer between Wychford and Shipcot to pause and stare at them.
On the second night of their stay with the Strettons, Monica, when she and Pauline were going to bed, suddenly turned round from the dressing-table and demanded in rhetorical dismay why they had come.
"Never mind," said Pauline. "We"ve only got five more evenings."
"Well, that"s nearly a week," Monica sighed. "And I"m tired to death of Olive already."
"But I"m much worse off," Pauline declared dolefully. "Because I have to sit next to the Professor, who does frighten me so. You see, he will include me in the conversation. Last night at dinner, after he"d been talking to that don from Balliol who knew Guy and whom I was dying to ask ... to talk to myself, I mean, he turned round to me and said, "I am afraid, Miss Pauline, that Aramaic roots are not very interesting to you." Well, of course I got muddled between Aramaic and aromatic, and said that Father had just been given a lot which were very poisonous."
Monica laughed that sedate laugh of hers, which always seemed to Pauline like a clock striking, so independent was it of anybody"s feelings.
"Monica darling, I don"t want to be critical," said Pauline. "But you know sometimes your laugh sounds just a little--a very little self-satisfied."
"I think I am rather self-satisfied," Monica agreed, combing her golden hair away from her high pale forehead. "And Margaret is conceited, and you"re twice as sweet as both of us put together."
"Oh, no I"m not, oh, no, no, Monica dearest, I"m not," Pauline contradicted hurriedly. "No, really I"m very horrid. And, you know, when I"m bored I"m sure I show it. Oh dear, I hope the Strettons didn"t notice I was bored. Mrs. Stretton was so touching with the things they had brought back from Madeira, and I do hate things people bring back from places like Madeira."
"And when you"re not bored with anybody," said Monica, "you"re rather apt to make that too obvious also."
"Monica, why are you saying that?" Pauline asked with wide-open eyes.
"Even supposing Guy is in love with you," said Monica, slowly blowing out the candles on the dressing-table as she spoke, so that nothing was left but the rosy gas, "I don"t think it"s necessary to show him quite so clearly that you"re in love with _him_.
"Monica!"
"Darling little sister, I do so want you ... oh, how can I put it? Well, you know, when you break the time in a trio, as you sometimes do...."
"But I"m not in love with Guy," Pauline interrupted. "At least, oh, Monica, why do you choose a house like this to tell me such things?" she asked with tears and blushes fighting in her countenance.
"Pauline, it"s only that I want you to keep in time."
"I can"t possibly stay with the Strettons another five days," declared Pauline in deepest gloom. "You ought not to say things like that here."