much you
would love him if you and he had ... Margaret, you know what I mean."

Pauline blew out the candle and rushed from the dark room; and lying
awake in her own bed, she fancied among the flowers of the Rectory such
fairy children for Margaret and herself, such fairy children dancing by
the margin of the river.

MAY

On the morning before Pauline's birthday Guy received a letter from
Michael Fane announcing abruptly his engagement and adding that on
account of worldly opposition he had been persuaded into a postponement
of his marriage for two months. Guy was rather ironically amused by the
serious manner in which Michael took so brief a delay, and he could not
help thinking how unreasonably impatient of trifles people with ample
private means often showed themselves. Michael wrote that he would like
to spend some of his probation at Plashers Mead, and alluded to the
"luck" of his friend in being so near his Pauline.

Guy wrote a letter of congratulation, and then he put Michael's news out
of his mind in order to examine the two complete sets of the proofs on
his poems which had also arrived that morning. He was engaged in the
task of making a rather clumsy binding for them out of a piece of
stained vellum when Richard Ford came round to Plashers Mead. Guy
welcomed him gladly, for besides the personal attraction he felt towards
this lean and silent engineer, he perceived in the likelihood of
Richard's speedy marriage an earnest of his own. Somehow that marriage
was going to break the spell of inactivity to which at the Rectory all
seemed to be subject, and from which Guy was determined to keep Richard
free, even if it were necessary to shake him as continuously as tired
wanderers in the snow are shaken out of a dangerous sleep.

"I came round to consult with you about my present to Pauline
to-morrow," said Richard, very solemnly. "I've brought round one or two
little things, so that you could give me your advice."

"Why, of course I will," said Guy.

"They're down-stairs in the hall. I had some difficulty in explaining to
your housekeeper that I wasn't a peddler."

In the hall was stacked a pile completely representative of the bazar:
half a dozen shawls, the model of a temple, a carved table, some inlaid
stools, every sort of typical Oriental gewgaw; in fact, an agglomeration
that seemed to invite the smell of cheap incense for its effective
display.

"Godbold drove them over," Richard explained