poor Miss Verney, so that I had to
give her a horrid little china dog, though she hates dogs."

"Now I'm sure it'll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there,"
Mrs. Grey affirmed, hopefully.

"Oh, how glad I am I'm not going!" said Margaret.

"I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her.

"They're not my friends," Margaret replied, with a shrug.

"No, but they're more your friends than mine," Pauline argued. "Because
you're nearer to Monica. They're four years off being my friends and
only two from being yours."

"Miss Monica," said Janet, coming into the room, "the 'bus has come out
from the King's Head yard, and you'll be late."

There was instantly a confusion of preparation by Mrs. Grey and Pauline,
while Monica sighed at the trouble of departure, and Margaret with
exasperating indifference sat warm and triumphant by the fire.

"Good gracious!" the Rector exclaimed, flinging the catalogue down and
speaking loud enough to be heard over the feverish search for Pauline's
left glove. "These people have the impudence to advertise _Penstemon
Lobbii_ as a novelty when it's really our old friend _Breviflorus_. What
on earth is to be done with these scoundrels?"

The horn of the omnibus sounded at the end of Rectory Lane; and the fat
guard was marching through the snow with the girls' luggage. The
good-bys were all said; and presently Pauline, with her muff held close
to her cheeks against the north wind, was sitting on top of the omnibus
that was toiling up the Shipcot road. As she caught sight of Plashers
Mead, etched upon the white scene, she wished she had left a message
with Margaret to say in what deep disgrace Guy was. On they labored
across five miles of snow-stilled country with sparse flakes melting
upon the horses' flanks, and never a wayfarer between Wychford and
Shipcot to pause and stare at them.

On the second night of their stay with the Strettons, Monica, when she
and Pauline were going to bed, suddenly turned round from the
dressing-table and demanded in rhetorical dismay why they had come.

"Never mind," said Pauline; "we've only got five more evenings."

"Well, that's nearly a week," Monica sighed. "And I'm tired to death of
Olive already."

"But I'm much worse off," Pauline declared, dolefully. "Because I have
to sit next to the Professor, who does frighten me so. You see, he will
include me in the conversation. Last night at dinner, after he'd been
talking to that don f