Take a day to think over my proposal and telegraph your answer to-morrow.
Your affectionate father,
John Hazlewood.
It seemed fateful, the arrival of this letter on top of the doubts of last night. A day was not long in which to make up his mind. And yet, after all, a moment was enough. He ought to go; he ought to telegraph immediately before he could vacillate; he must not see Pauline first; he ought to accept this offer. Farewell, fame!
Guy opened the front door and walked into Birdwood come with a note from the Rectory.
"Miss Pauline took me away from my work to give you this most particular and important and wait for the answer," said the gardener.
Guy asked him to step inside and see Miss Peasey while he went up-stairs to write the reply.
"Miss Peasey doesn't think much of your variety, Birdwood. She says the garden is entirely blue."
"What, all those dellyphiniums the Rector raised with his own hand and she don't like blue!"
Birdwood shook his head to express another defeat at the hands of incomprehensible woman. A moment later, as Guy went up to his room with Pauline's note, he heard him bellow in the kitchen:
"What's this I hear, mum, about the garden being too blue?"