e years to the fine etching of the present. Miriam at home, the
Greys at Wychford, and in some ways most of all Richard Ford at
Fairfield gave him in a few months the poise he would have received more
gradually from a public school education.

So Mark read Greek with the Vicar of Little Fairfield and Latin with the
Rector of Wych-on-the-Wold, who, amiable and holy man, had to work
nearly twice as hard as his pupil to maintain his reserve of
instruction. Mark took long walks with Richard Ford when Richard was
home in his vacations, and long walks by himself when Richard was at
Cooper's Hill. He often went to Wychford Rectory, where he learnt to
enjoy Schumann and Beethoven and Bach and Brahms.

"You're like three Saint Cecilias," he told them. "Monica is by Luini
and Margaret is by Perugino and Pauline. . . ."

"Oh, who am I by?" Pauline exclaimed, clapping her hands.

"I give it up. You're just Saint Cecilia herself at fourteen."

"Isn't Mark foolish?" Pauline laughed.

"It's my birthday to-morrow," said Mark, "so I'm allowed to be foolish."

"It's my birthday in a week," said Pauline. "And as I'm two years
younger than you I can be two years more foolish."

Mark looked at her, and he was filled with wonder at the sanctity of her
maidenhood. Thenceforth meditating upon the Annunciation he should
always clothe Pauline in a robe of white samite and set her in his
mind's eye for that other maid of Jewry, even as painters found holy
maids in Florence or Perugia for their bright mysteries.

While Mark was walking back to Wych and when on the brow of the first
rise of the road he stood looking down at Wychford in the valley below,
a chill lisping wind from the east made him shiver and he thought of the
lines in Keats' _Eve of St. Mark_:

_The chilly sunset faintly told_
_Of unmatured green vallies cold,_
_Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,_
_Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,_
_Of primroses by shelter'd rills,_
_And daisies on the aguish hills._

The sky in the west was an unmatured green valley tonight, where Venus
bloomed like a solitary primrose; and on the dark hills of Heaven the
stars were like daisies. He turned his back on the little town and set
off up the hill again, while the wind slipped through the hedge beside
him in and out of the blackthorn boughs, lisping, whispering, snuffling,
sniffing, like a small inquisitive animal. He thought of Monica,
Margaret, and Pauline pl