, last
time we met, your sister upset the mushrooms?"

Pauline knew she was blushing, and when the rose-leaves were all
gathered up, tea came in. Her attention was now entirely occupied by
preventing her mother from doing the most ridiculous things with cakes
and sugar and milk, and when tea was over Guy got up to go.

There was a brief discussion after his departure, in which Margaret was
so critical of his dress and of his absurdities that Pauline was
reassured, and presently, indeed, found herself taking their visitor's
part against her sisters.

"Quite right, quite right, Pauline," said Mrs. Grey. "He's charming ...
charming ... charming! Margaret and Monica so critical. Always so
critical."

Presently the family hurried out into the drive to protest against the
Rector's planting any more bulbs, to tell him how unkind he had been not
to come up to tea, and to warn him that the bell would sound for
Evensong in two minutes. He was dragged out of the shrubbery where he
had been superintending a clearance of aucubas, preparatory to planting
a drift of new and very deep yellow primroses.

"Really, my dears, I have never seen _Primula vulgaris_ so fine in
texture or color. My friend Gilmour has spent ten years working up the
stock. As large as florins."

So he boasted of new wonders next Spring in the Rectory garden, while
his wife and daughters brushed him and dusted him and helped to button
up his cassock.

"Doesn't Father look a darling?" demanded Pauline, as they watched the
tall, handsome dreamer striding along the drive towards the sound of the
bell, that was clanging loud and soft in its battle with the wind.

"Oh, Pauline, run after him," said Mrs. Grey, "and remind him it's the
Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. He started wrong last Sunday, and
to-day's Wednesday, and it so offends some of the congregation."

Pauline overtook her father in the church porch, and he promised he
would be careful to read the right collect. She had not stayed to get a
hat, and therefore must wait for him outside.

"Very well, my dear child; I sha'n't be long. Do go and see if those
sternbergias I planted against the south porch are in flower. Dear me,
they should be, you know, after this not altogether intolerably overcast
summer. Sun, though, sun! they want sun, poor dears!"

"But, Father, I can't remember what sternbergias look like."

"Oh yes, you can," said the Rector. "_Sternbergia lutea._ Amaryllidaceae.
A perfectl