u."

Guy shook his head.

"I know how to manage him," he proclaimed, confidently.

Then he opened the door; along the drive the wind moaned, getting up for
a gusty Bartlemy-tide.

Pauline stood in the lighted doorway, letting the light shine upon him
until he was lost in the shadows of the tall trees, sending, as he
vanished, one more kiss down the wind to her.

"Are you happy to-night?" asked her mother, bending over Pauline when
she was in bed.

"Oh, Mother darling, I'm so happy that I can't tell you how happy I am."

In the candle-light her new ring sparkled; and when her mother was gone
she put beside it the crystal ring, and it seemed to sparkle still more.
Pauline was in such a mood of tenderness to everything that she petted
even her pillow with a kind of affection, and she had the contentment of
knowing she was going to meet sleep as if it were a great benignant
figure that was bending to hear her tale of happy love.

ANOTHER AUTUMN

SEPTEMBER

Guy became much occupied with the best way of breaking to his father the
news of his engagement. He wished it were his marriage of which he had
to inform him; for there was about marriage such a beautiful finality of
spilled milk that the briefest letter would have settled everything. If
now he wrote to announce an engagement, he ran the risk of his father's
refusal to come and pay him that visit on which he was building such
hopes from the combined effect of Pauline and Plashers Mead in restoring
to the schoolmaster the bright mirror of his own youth. It would
scarcely be fair to the Greys to introduce him while he was still
ignorant of the relation in which he was supposed to stand to them, for
they could scarcely be expected to regard him as a man to be humored up
to such a point. After all, it was not as if he in his heart looked to
his father for practical help; in reality he knew already that the
engagement would meet with his opposition, notwithstanding Pauline ...
notwithstanding Plashers Mead. Perhaps it would be better to write and
tell him about it; if he came it would obviate an awkward explanation
and there could be no question of false pretenses; if he declined to
come, no doubt he would write such a letter as would justify his son in
holding him up to the Greys as naturally intractable. Indeed, if it were
not that he knew how sensitive Pauline was to the paternal benediction,
he would have made no attempt to present him at all.