Pauline hung upon his arm while they walked back to the Rectory through the darkling plantation.
"Isn't it a perfect place?" she murmured, hugging his arm closer when they came to the end of the mossy path and saw the twinkling of the drawing-room's oriel on the narrow south side, and the eleven steep gables that cleft the now scarcely luminous sky, one after another all the length of the house.
"I doubt if anything but this confounded cotoneaster would do well against this wall," replied the Rector.
He never failed to make this observation when he reached his front door; and his family knew that one day the cotoneaster would be torn down for a succession of camellias to struggle with the east winds of unkind Oxfordshire. In the hall Mrs. Grey and Margaret were bending over a table.
"Guy has left his card," said Margaret.
"Is that the man who came to see me about the rats?" asked the Rector.
"No, no, Francis," said Mrs. Grey. "Guy is the young man at Plashers Mead."
"Isn't Francis sweet?" cried Pauline, reaching up to kiss him.
"Hush, Pauline. Pauline, you must not call your father Francis in the hall," said Mrs. Grey.
"How touching of Guy to leave a card," Pauline murmured, looking at the oblong of pasteboard shimmering in the gloom.