to go away for a
month, so that the new tenant of Plashers Mead might have had time to
fall irremediably in love with Monica before she came back. Richard
would certainly be dreadfully worried out in India when he heard of a
young man at Plashers Mead, and certainly rather ... yes, certainly in
church on Sunday he had appeared rather charming. It was only last
Spring that poor Richard had wished he could be living in Plashers Mead
himself, and they had had several long discussions which never shed any
light upon the problem of how such an ambition would be gratified.

"I expect Monica will be like ice, and Margaret will seem so much easier
to talk to, and if I dared to suggest that Monica should unbend a
little she would freeze me as well. Oh, it's all very difficult," sighed
Pauline to herself, "and perhaps I'd better not try to influence things.
Only, if he does seem to like Margaret much better than Monica, I shall
have to bring poor Richard into the conversation, which always makes
Margaret cross for days."

As she came to this resolution Pauline looked half apprehensively at her
sister reading in the tumble-down arm-chair by the fire. How angry
Margaret would be if she guessed what was being plotted, and Pauline
actually jumped when she suddenly declared that _Mansfield Park_ was
almost the best book Jane Austen ever wrote.

"Is it, darling Margaret?" said Pauline, with a disarming willingness to
be told again that it certainly was.

"Or perhaps _Emma_," Margaret murmured, and Pauline hid herself behind
the curtains. How droll Father had been about the "new young creature"
at Plashers Mead! It had been so difficult to persuade him to interrupt
one precious afternoon of planting bulbs to do his duty either as a
neighbor or as Rector of the parish. And when he came back all he would
say of the visit was:

"Very pleasant, my dears. Oh yes, he showed me everything, and he really
has a most remarkable collection of dish-covers--quite remarkable. But I
ought not to have deserted those irises that Garstin sent me from the
Taurus. Now perhaps we shall manage that obstinate little plum-colored
brute which likes the outskirts of a pine forest, so they tell me."

Just as Pauline was laughing to herself at the memory of her father's
visit, the Rector himself appeared on the lawn. He was in his
shirt-sleeves; his knees were muddy with kneeling; and Birdwood, the
gardener, all blown about by the wind, was close behind him,