"Don't be stupid. What do the Wychford people matter? Besides I should hate to do anything like that."
She was half angry with Guy for the suggestion. It seemed to cast a shadow on the morning.
When Pauline got back home, she told them all about her meeting with Guy: nobody had a word of disapproval, not even Margaret, and the faint malaise of uncertainty vanished.
After tea, however, Mrs. Grey came in looking rather agitated.
"Pauline," she began at once. "You must not meet Guy alone like that again."
"Oh, darling Mother, you are looking so pink and flustered," said Pauline.
"No, there's nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. I was most annoyed. Four of the people I visited actually had the impertinence to ask me if you and Guy were engaged."
Pauline went off into peals of laughter and danced about the room; but when she was alone and thought again of what the gossips were saying, she suddenly realized it was not altogether for Richard's sake that she had dreaded the idea of Guy's falling in love with Margaret.
January
PLASHERS MEAD and the Rectory were not the only romantic houses in Wychford. Indeed the little town as a whole had preserved by reason of its remoteness from railways and important highroads the character given to it during the many years of prosperity which lasted until the reign of Charles the First. From that time it had slowly declined; and now with a stagnation that every year was more deeply accentuated by modern conditions it was still declining. New houses were never built, and even the King's Head, a pledge of commercial confidence in the Hanoverian succession, seemed to flaunt with an inappropriate modernity its red bricks mellowed by the passage of two centuries. Apart from this rival to the Stag Inn the fabric of Wychford was uniformly grey, to which, notwithstanding Miss Peasey's declaration of sameness, variety was amply secured by the character of the architecture. Gables and mullions; oaken eaves and corbels carefully ornamented; latticed oriels and sashed bows; roofs of steep unequal pitch to which age had often added strange undulations; chimney stacks of stone and gothic entries, all these gave variety enough; and if the whole effect was too sober for Miss Peasey's taste, the little town on the hillside was now safe for ever from the brightening of the dolls-house spirit.