ng.

"Well, Father," Pauline interrupted, "have we got your permission?
Because that's what we've come up to ask."

"You surprise me," said the Rector, starting back with an exaggerated
look of astonishment such as one might use with children.

"Father, if you won't be serious about it, I shall be very much hurt."

"I am very serious indeed about it," said the Rector. "And supposing I
said I wouldn't hear of any such thing as an engagement between you two
young creatures, what would you say then?"

"Oh, I should never forgive you," Pauline declared. "Besides, we're not
young. Guy is twenty-three."

"Now I thought he was at least fifty," said the Rector.

"Father, we shall have to go away if you won't be serious. Mother told
us to explain to you, and I think it's really unkind of you to laugh at
us."

The Rector rose and knocked his pipe out.

"I must finish off the perennials. Well, well, Pauline, my dear, you're
twenty-one...."

Pauline would have liked to let him go on thinking she was of age, but
she could not on this solemn occasion, and so she told him that she was
still only twenty.

"Ah, that makes a difference," said the Rector, pretending to look very
fierce. And when Pauline's face fell he added, with a chuckle, "of one
year. Well, well, I fancy you've both arranged everything. What is there
left for me to say? You mustn't forget to show Guy those Nerines. God
bless you, pretty babies. Be happy."

Then the Rector walked quickly away and left them together in his dusty
library where the botanical folios and quartos displaying tropic blooms
sprawled open about the floor, where along the mantelpiece the rhizomes
of _Oncocyclus irises_ were being dried; and where seeds were strewn
plenteously on his desk, rattling among the papers whenever the wind
blew.

"Guy, we are really engaged."

"Pauline, Pauline!"

In the dusty room among the ghosts of dead seasons and the moldering
store amassed by the suns of other years, they stood locked, heart to
heart.

Before Guy went home that night, when they were lingering in the hall,
he told Pauline that the next thing to be done was to write to his own
father.

"Guy, do you think he'll like me?"

"Why, how could he help it? But he may grumble at the idea of my being
engaged."

"When do you think he'll write?"

"I expect he'll come down here to see me. In the Spring he wrote and
said he would."

"Guy, I'm sure he's going to make it difficult for yo