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 tumbledown armchair 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 neighbour 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-coloured 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, carrying an armful of roots.

Pauline threw up the window with a crash and called out:

"Father, Father, what a darling you look, and your hair will be swept right away, if you aren't careful."

The Rector waved his trowel remotely, and Pauline blew him kisses, until she was made aware of protests in the room behind her.

"Really," exclaimed Monica. "You are so noisy. You're almost vulgar."

"Oh, no, Monica," cried Pauline dancing round the room. "Not vulgar. Not a horrid little vulgar person!"

"And what a noise you do make," Margaret joined in. "Please, Pauline, shut the window."

At this moment Mrs. Grey opened the door and loosed a whirlwind of papers upon the nursery.

"Who's vulgar? Who's vulgar?" asked Mrs. Grey laughing absurdly. "Why, what a tremendous draught!"

"Mother, shut the door, the door," expostulated Margaret and Monica simultaneously. "And do tell Pauline to control herself sometimes."

"Pauline, control yourself," said Mrs. Grey.

When the papers were settling down, Janet the maid came in to say there was a gentleman in the drawing-room, and in the confusion of the new whirlwind her entrance raised, Janet was gone before anyone knew who the gentleman was.

"Ugh," Margaret grumbled. "I never can be allowed to read in peace."

"I was practising the Mendelssohn trio, Mother," said Monica reproachfully.

"Let us all practise. Let us all practise," Mrs. Grey proposed, beaming enthusiastically upon her daughters. "That would be charming."

"Father is so sweet," said Pauline. "He's simply covered with mud."

"Has he got his kneeler?" asked Mrs. Grey.

Pauline rushed to the window again.

"Mother says 'have you got your kneeler'?"

The Rector paused vaguely, and Birdwood tried to indicate by kicking himself that he had the kneeler.

"Ah, thoughtful Birdwood," said Mrs. Grey in a satisfied voice.

"And now do you think we might have the window shut?" asked Margaret resignedly.

Monica was quite deliberately thumping at the piano part she was practising. Mrs. Grey sat down and began to tell a long story in which three poor people of Wychford got curiously blended somehow into one, so that Pauline, who was the only daughter that ever listened, became very sympathetic over a fourth poor person who had nothing to do with the tale.

"And surely Janet came in to say something about the drawing-room," said Mrs. Grey as she finished.

"She said a gentleman," Pauline declared.

"Oh, how vague you all are," exclaimed Margaret, jumping up.

"Well, Margaret, you were here," Pauline said. "And so was Monica."

"But I was practising," said Monica primly. "And I didn't hear a word Janet said."

There was always this preliminary confusion at the Rectory when a stranger was announced, and it always ended in the same way by Mrs. Grey and Monica going down first, by Pauline rushing after them and banging the door as they were greeting the visitor, and by Margaret strolling in when the stage of comparative ease had been attained. So it fell out on this occasion, for Monica's skirt was just disappearing round the drawing-room door when Pauline, horrified at the idea of having to come in by herself, cleared the last three stairs of the billowy flight with a leap and sent Monica spinning forward as the door propelled her into the room.

"Monica, I am so sorry."

"Pauline! Pauline!" said Mrs. Grey reprovingly. "So like an avalanche always."

Guy, who had by now been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour, came forward a little shyly.

"How d'ye do, how d'ye do," said Mrs. Grey quickly and nervously. "We're so delighted to see you. So good of you ... charming really. Pauline is always impetuous. You've come to study farming at Wychford haven't you? Most interesting. Don't tug at me, Pauline. Monica, do ring for tea. Are you fond of music?"

Pauline withdrew from the conversation after the whispered attempt to correct her mother about Mr. Hazlewood's having taken Plashers Mead in order to be a farmer. She wanted to contemplate the visitor without being made to involve herself in the confusions of politeness. 'Was he dangerous to Richard?' she asked herself, and alas, she had to tell herself that indeed it seemed probable he might be. Of course he was inevitably on the way to falling in love with Margaret, and as she looked at him with his clear-cut pale face, his tumbled hair and large brown eyes which changed what seemed at first a slightly cynical personality to one that was almost a little wistful, Pauline began to speculate if Margaret might not herself be rather attracted to him. This was an unforeseen complication, for Margaret so far had only accepted homage. Pauline definitely began to be jealous for Richard whose homage had been the most prodigal of any; and as Guy drawled on about his first adventure of house-keeping she told herself he was affected. The impression, too, of listening to someone more than usually self-possessed and cynical revived in her mind; and those maliciously drooping lids were obliterating the effect of the brown eyes. Sitting by herself in the oriel-window Pauline was nearly sure she did not like him. He had no business to be at the Rectory when Richard was building a bridge out in India; and now here was Margaret strolling graciously in and almost at once obviously knowing so well how to get on with this idler. Oh, positively she disliked him. So cold and so cruel was that mouth, and so vain he was, as he sat there bending forward over hand-clasped, long, stupid, crossed legs. What right had he to laugh with Margaret about their father's visit? This stranger had assuredly never appreciated him. He was come here to spoil the happiness of Wychford, to destroy the immemorial perfection of life at the Rectory. And why would he keep looking up at herself? Margaret could be pleasant to anybody, but this intruder would soon find that she herself was loyal to the absent. Pauline wished that, when he met them all on that night of the moon, she had been so horridly rude as to make him avoid the family for ever.