troduced a lot of his High Church frippery which so
annoys some of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to
afford so much leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy
to think about anything like that except in the Summer holidays,
when flowers would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This
year I hope to come and see you for a week or two, and we shall
be able to discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please
oblige me by acknowledging the inclosed cheque.

Your affectionate father,
JOHN HAZLEWOOD.

Guy went out in the orchard to meditate upon the advisableness of
telling his father at once about Pauline. If he were coming to stay here
next August, he ought to know beforehand, for it would be horrid to have
the atmosphere of Plashers Mead ruined by acrimonious argument. August,
however, was still a long way off, and now there was going to be fine
weather for a while, which must not be spoiled. Besides, perhaps in the
end his father would not come, and, anyway, himself would be having to
decide presently upon a more definite step. He would tell Pauline, when
he saw her to-morrow, that he ought to go up to London and get some
journalistic work so as to bring the time of their marriage nearer. Or
should he wait until he had sounded Michael about that academy? Plashers
Mead enlarged itself for Guy's vision until the orchard was a quadrangle
famed with gray cloisters, along which Parnassian aspirants walked in
meditation. Would any of them be married except himself and Pauline? On
the whole, he decided that they would not, though, of course, if Michael
were to find the capital he must be allowed to marry. How the Balliol
people would laugh at these fantastic plans, thought Guy, and he stopped
for a moment from the architectonics of his academy to laugh at himself.
Certainly it would be better not to publish his plans even to Pauline
until they showed a hint of conceivable maturity. Guy fell back into the
comfort of spacious dreams, wandering up and down the orchard; and round
about him the starlings, pranked in metallic plumage of green and
bronze, quarreled over the holes in the apple-tree they coveted for
their nests.

Suddenly Guy heard his name called, and, looking up, he saw across the
mill-stream Margaret and Pauline standing in the churchyard.

"We've been to church," said Pauline. "And a dead bat fell down nearly
on to Father's head when he was givi