ddleia auriculata_
honeycomb-scented in the angle of two walls; the double Michaelmas
daisy, an ugly brute already condemned to extermination; a white
red-hot-poker, evidently a favorite of the Rector's by the way he gazed
upon it and said so casually _Kniphofia multiflora_, as if it were not
indeed a treasure blooming in Oxfordshire's dreary Autumn.

"Tulips to go in next week," said the Rector, rolling the prospect upon
his tongue with meditative enjoyment. "A friend of mine has just sent me
some nice fellows from Bokhara and Turkestan. I ought to get them in
this week, but Birdwood must finish with these roses. And I've got a lot
of clusiana too that ought to be in. I am going to try her in
competition with shrubbery roots and see if _they'll_ make her behave
herself."

"Could I come in and help?" offered Guy.

"Well, now that would certainly be most kind," said the Rector; and his
thin, handsome face lit up with the excitement of infecting Guy with his
own passion. "But aren't you busy?"

"Oh no. I usually work at night."

So Guy came to plant tulips, and from planting tulips to being asked to
lunch was not far, and from finishing off a few left over to being asked
to tea was not far, either. Moreover, when the tulips were all planted
there were gladioli to be sorted and put away. Incidentally, too, the
punt had to be calked and the boat-house had to be strengthened, so that
in the end it was half-way into November before Guy realized he had been
coming to the Rectory almost every day. The more he came, however, the
more he was fascinated by the family. They still eluded him, and he was
always aware, particularly between Margaret and Pauline, of a life in
which as yet he hardly shared. At the same time, so familiar now were
the inner places of the house and most of all the nursery, he felt as if
happily there would come a day when to none of the sisters would he seem
more noticeable than one of their tumble-down arm-chairs.

Once or twice he stayed to dinner, and the long dining-room with the
sea-gray wall-paper and curtains of the strawberry-thief design was
always entered with a particular contentment of spirit. The table was
very large, for somebody always forgot to take out the extra leaf put in
for a dinner sometime last summer, or perhaps two summers ago. The
result was that the Rector was far away in the shadows at one end; Mrs.
Grey equally remote at the other; while Guy would in turn be near to
Marga