beef
and roast mutton which was the horizon of her housekeeping.

These solitary meals were lightened by the thought of the Rectory.
Neither beef nor mutton seemed of much importance when his mind's eye
could hold that shadowy drawing-room. There was Monica with her
pale-gold hair in the stormy sunlight, cold and shy, but of such a
marble purity of line that but to sit beside her was to admire a statue
whose coldness made her the more admirable. There was Margaret, carved
slimly out of ivory, very tall, with weight of dusky hair, and slow,
fastidious voice that spoke dreamily of the things Guy loved best. There
was Pauline sitting away from the others in the window-seat, away in her
shyness and wildness. Was not the magic of her almost more difficult to
recapture than any? A brier rose she was whose petals seemed to fall at
the touch of definition, a brier rose that was waving out of reach, even
of thought. Guy wished he could visualize the Rector in his own
drawing-room; but instead he had to set him in Plashers Mead, of which
no doubt he had thought the owner a young ass; and Guy blushed to
remember the nervous idiocy which had let him take the Rector solemnly
into the kitchen to look at dish-covers in a row, and deaf Miss Peasey
sitting by as much fire as the table would yield to her chair. But if
the Rector were missing from the picture, at any rate he could picture
Mrs. Grey, shy like her daughters and with a delicious vagueness all her
own. She was most like Pauline, and indeed in Pauline Guy could see her
mother, as the young moon holds in her lap the wraith of the old
moon....

"Why, you haven't eaten anything," remonstrated Miss Peasey, breaking in
upon his vision. "And I've made you a rice pudding for a little
variety."

The shadowy drawing-room faded with the old chintz curtains and fragile,
almost immaterial silver; the china bowls of Lowestoft; the dull, white
paneling and faintly aromatic sweetness. Instead remained a rice pudding
that smelled and looked as solid as a pie.

However, that very afternoon Guy was greatly encouraged to get an
invitation to dinner at the Rectory from the hands of the gardener.
Birdwood was one of those servants who seem to have accepted with the
obligations of service the extreme responsibilities of paternity; and
Guy hastened to take advantage of the chance to establish himself on
good terms with one who might prove a most powerful ally.

"Not much of a garden, I'm afrai