"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural curiosity of the neighbourhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the post-office to-night."
"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline desperately. "I only want to be out of this wind—this wind."
She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his ill-humour, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for work; but she would not let him and hurried towards home at the back of the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in the drawing-room which he always used for parochial business, because he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the flock.
Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the window, glad to be out of the wind but pondering a little mournfully the lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others arrived, Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly, although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.
"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.
"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered, nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to 'catch her out,' as Janet would have said.
"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.
Pauline felt that what Monica meant to say had been: 'we did not spy upon you deliberately.' And that she should have had this instinct of putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant, that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over, Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.
Her mother began at once:
"Pauline, I'm surprized at your going into the Abbey with Guy."