May
ON the morning before Pauline's birthday Guy received a letter from Michael Fane announcing abruptly his engagement and adding that on account of worldly opposition he had been persuaded into a postponement of his marriage for two months. Guy was rather ironically amused by the serious manner in which Michael took so brief a delay, and he could not help thinking how unreasonably impatient of trifles people with ample private means often showed themselves. Michael wrote that he would like to spend some of his probation at Plashers Mead and alluded to the 'luck' of his friend in being so near his Pauline.
Guy wrote a letter of congratulation, and then he put Michael's news out of his mind in order to examine the two complete sets of the proofs of his poems which had also arrived that morning. He was engaged in the task of making rather a clumsy binding for them out of a piece of stained vellum, when Richard Ford came round to Plashers Mead. Guy welcomed him gladly, for besides the personal attraction he felt toward this lean and silent engineer he perceived in the likelihood of Richard's speedy marriage an earnest of his own. Somehow that marriage was going to break the spell of inactivity, to which at the Rectory all seemed to be subject and from which Guy was determined to keep Richard free, even if it were necessary to shake him as continuously as tired wanderers in the snow are shaken out of a dangerous sleep.
"I came round to consult with you about my present to Pauline to-morrow," said Richard very solemnly. "I've brought round one or two little things, so that you could give me your advice."
"Why, of course I will," said Guy.
"They're downstairs in the hall. I had some difficulty in explaining to your housekeeper that I wasn't a pedlar."
In the hall was stacked a pile completely representative of the bazaar: half-a-dozen shawls, the model of a temple, a carved table, some inlaid stools, every sort of typical oriental gewgaw, in fact an agglomeration that seemed to invite the smell of cheap incense for its effective display.
"Godbold drove them over," Richard explained as he saw Guy's astonishment. "Now look here, what's the best present for Pauline? You see I'm not at all an artistic sort of chap, and I don't want to hoick forward something that's going to be more of a nuisance than anything else."
"It's really awfully difficult to choose," said Guy rather ambiguously.
Then he discovered a simple ivory paper-knife which he declared was just the thing, having the happy thought that he would not cut the set of proofs he was binding for Pauline, so that to-morrow Richard could have the pleasure of beholding his gift put to immediate use.