our-frame showed nothing
but half-fledged birds from which since Winter had hung unkempt shreds
of blue and red wool. And even her mother's vague talks about the poor
people in Wychford had no longer an audience, because Margaret and
Monica never had listened, and now Pauline was as inattentive as her
sisters. Nothing was worth while except to be with Guy. Not one moment
of this June must be wasted, and Pauline managed to set up a precedent
for going out on the river with him after tea, when in the cool
afternoon they would float down behind Guy's house under willows, under
hawthorns, past the golden fleurs-de-lys, past the scented flags, past
the early meadowsweet and the flowering rush, past comfrey and
watermint, figwort, forget-me-not, and blue crane's-bill that shimmered
in the sun like steely mail.

On Midsummer Day about five o'clock Pauline and Guy set out on one of
these expeditions that they had stolen from regularity, and found all
their favorite fields occupied by haymakers whose labor they resented as
an intrusion upon the country they had come to regard as their own.

"Oh, I wish I had money!" Guy exclaimed. "I'd like to buy all this land
and keep it for you and me. Why must all these wretched people come and
disturb the peace of it?"

"I used to love haymaking," said Pauline, feeling a little wistful for
some of those simple joys that now seemed uncapturable again.

"Yes. I should like haymaking," Guy assented, "if we were married. It's
the fact that haymakers are at this moment preventing us being alone
which makes me cry out against them. How can I kiss you here?"

A wain loaded high with hay and laughing children was actually standing
close against the ingress to their own peninsula. The mellow sun of
afternoon was lending a richer quality of color to nut-brown cheeks and
arms; was throwing long shadows across the shorn grass; was gilding the
pitchforks and sparkling the gnats that danced above the patient horses.
It was a scene that should have made Pauline dream with joy of her
England; yet, with Guy's discontent brooding over it, she did not care
for these jocund haymakers who were working through the lustered
afternoon.

"Hopeless," Guy protested. "It's like Piccadilly Circus."

"Oh, Guy dear, you are absurd. It's not a bit like Piccadilly Circus."

"I don't see the use of living in the country if it's always going to be
alive with people," Guy went on. "We may as well turn round. The
afte