"Why do you always sit near a window?" asked Monica.
"She always rushes into a corner," said Margaret.
Pauline jumped up from her chair and would have run out of the room forthwith; but in passing the first table she knocked from it a silver bowl of pot-pourri and scattered the contents over the carpet. Down she knelt to hide her confusion and repair the damage, and at the same moment Guy plunged down beside her to help. She caught his eyes so tenderly humorous that she too laughed.
"I think it must be my fault," he said. "Don't you remember how, 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 in 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 colour. 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.