And then recurred to him as if from Ladingford Manor the lines of Christina Rossetti, which he half whispered to her:
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
They had the sharper emotion for Guy because he had neither brothers nor sisters of his own; and that this lovely girl beside him on this dreaming barge should be his sister gave to the landscape one more incommunicable beauty.
And so all day they glided down the young Thames; and when Guy had sat long enough with Margaret in the stern, he sat with Pauline at the prow; and about twilight they reached Oxford, whence they came to Shipcot by train and drove through five miles of moonlight back to Wychford.
August
PAULINE and Guy with their formal engagement in sight were careful to give no excuse for a postponement by abusing their privileges. The river was now much overgrown with weeds, and in the last week of July rough weather set in which kept them in the Rectory a good deal on the occasions when they met. Guy too was harder at work than he had been all the Summer. The fact of being presently engaged in the eyes of the world was sufficiently exciting for Pauline to console her for the shorter time spent with Guy. Moreover she was so grateful to her family for not opposing the publication of the engagement that she tried particularly to impress them with the sameness of herself, notwithstanding her being in love with Guy. It happened therefore that the old manner of existence at the Rectory reasserted itself for a while; the music in the evenings, the mornings in the garden, everything indeed that could make the family suppose that she was set securely in the heart of their united life.
"When you and Margaret marry," Monica announced, one afternoon when the three sisters were in their nursery, "I really think I shall become a nun."
"But we can't all leave Father and Mother," Pauline exclaimed shocked at the deserted prospect.
"Now isn't that like people in love?" said Monica.
"Ah, but anyway I shall only be living at Plashers Mead," Pauline went on. "So they won't be left entirely alone."