m all the time.

"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."

"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.

Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.

"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."

Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.

"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.

"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford
and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"

Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy
usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.

"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he
objected.

"Which reminds me," said Miss Peasey, "that you'll really have to give
that Bob another good thrashing, for he's eaten all the day's butter."

"Well, we can buy more butter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy
laughed.

"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that.
I never knew a large dog so dainty before."

Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more
personally.

"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked, at top voice.

Miss Peasey, however, did not answer, and from her complete indifference
to his question Guy knew that she did not like the idea of such a loan.
It looked as if he would be compelled to borrow the furniture from the
Rectory; and then he thought how, after all, it would be a doubly good
plan to do so, inasmuch as it would partially involve his father in the
obligations of a guest. Moreover, it could scarcely fail to be a slight
reproach to him that his son should have to borrow bedroom furniture
from the family of his betrothed.

Pauline was, of course, delighted at the idea of lending the furniture,
and she and Guy had the greatest fun together in amassing enough to
equip what would really be a very charming spare room. Deaf-and-dumb
Graves was called in; and Birdwood helped also, under protest at the
hindrance to his work, but at the same time reveling, if Birdwood could
be said to revel, in the diversion. Mrs. Grey presided over the
arrangement and fell so much in love with the new bedroom that she
pillaged the Rectory much more ruthlessly than Pauline, and in the end
they all decided that Guy's father would have the most attractive
bedroom in Wychford. Guy, with so much preparation on hand, had no time
to worry about the conduct of his father's visit, and after lunch on
Thursday he got into the t