y the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered.

"Oh no, thanks," said Monica, quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your
way."

He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not
wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the
banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of
mist.

How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at
Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters.
Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he
was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might
more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ...
he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little
frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must
find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so
obviously the youngest, with her light-brown hair and her laugh of which
even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious
echo. Monica, Margaret, and ... Rose, perhaps, for there had been
something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo
of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward sound eluded him,
the belfry clock with whir and buzz and groan made preparation to strike
the hour. Nine strokes boomed, leaving behind them a stillness absolute.
The poet thought of time before him, of the three sisters by the river,
of fame to come, and of his own fortune in finding Plashers Mead. Four
months ago he had been in Macedonia, full of pro-consular romance, and
now he was in England with a much keener sense of every moment's
potentiality than he had ever known in the dreams of Oriental dominion.
This sublunary adventure indicated how great a richness of pastoral life
lay behind the slumber of a forgotten town; and it was seeming more than
ever a pity Michael had not waited until to-night, so that he also might
have met Monica and Margaret and that smallest innominate sister with
the light-brown hair. Guy could not help arranging with himself for his
friend to fall in love with one of them; and since he at once allotted
Monica to Michael, he knew that he himself preferred one of the others.
But which? Oh, it was ridiculous to ask such questions after seeing
three girls for three minutes of moonlight. Perhaps it really had been
sorcery, and in the morning, when he met them in Wychford High Street,
they