o be, if you'd only...."

"You know I hate you to talk about him," Margaret interrupted.

Pauline was silent. It was always a little alarming when Margaret was
angry. With Monica one took for granted the disapproval of a fastidious
nature, and it was fun to tease her; but Margaret with her sudden
alternations of hardness and sympathy, of being great fun and
frightfully intolerant, it was always wiser to propitiate. So Pauline
stayed in the window-seat, pondering mournfully the lawn mottled with
leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every
gust of the wind that skated across the surface. The very high gray wall
against which the Japanese quinces spread their peacock-tails of foliage
was shutting her out from the world to-day, and Pauline wished it were
Summer again so that she could hurry through the little door in the wall
and across the paddock to the banks of the Greenbush. In the Rectory
punt she would not have had to bother with sisters who would not come
out for a walk when they were invited.

The tall trees on either side of the lawn roared in the wind and
showered more leaves upon the angry air. What a long time it was to
Summer, and for no reason that she could have given herself Pauline
began to think about the man who had taken Plashers Mead. Of course it
was obvious he would fall in love either with Monica or with Margaret,
and really it must be managed somehow that he should choose Monica.
Everybody fell in love with Margaret, which was so hard on poor Richard
out in India, who was much the nicest person in the world, and whom
Margaret must never give up. Pauline looked at her sister and felt
afraid the new tenant of Plashers Mead would fall in love with her, for
Margaret was so very adorable with her slim hands and her somber hair.

"Really almost more like a lily than a girl," thought Pauline. Somehow
the comparison reassured her, since it was impossible to think of any
one's rushing to gather a lily without a great deal of hesitation.

"I wish poor Richard would write and tell her she is like a lily,
instead of always writing such a lot about the bridge he is building,
though I expect it's a very wonderful bridge."

After all, Monica with her glinting evanescence was just as beautiful as
Margaret, and even more mysterious; and if she only would not be so
frightening to young men, who would not fall in love with her! Pauline
wondered vaguely if she could not persuade Margaret