"Oh, dear, this is a variety!"
Guy led them solemnly round the house and furnished the empty rooms with such vivid descriptions that their emptiness was scarcely any longer perceptible. In his own room he waited anxiously for judgment. Margaret was, of course, the first to declare an opinion. She did not like his curtains nor his green canvas, and she was by no means willing to accept his excuse that they were relics of undergraduate taste.
"If you don't like them now, why do you have them? Why not plain white for the walls and no curtains at all, until you can get ones you really do like?"
Pauline was afraid his feelings would be hurt and declared with such transparent dishonesty how greatly she loved everything in the room that Guy, grateful though he was to her intended sweetness, was more discouraged than ever. Monica objected to his having Our Lady on the mantelshelf, and would not admit her as Saint Rose of Lima; but Guy was enough in awe of Monica not to justify the identification with Saint Rose by his desire for a poetic apostrophe. As for Mrs. Grey, she behaved as she always did when Monica and Margaret were being critical—that is, by firing off "charmings!" in a sort of benevolent musketry; but if Guy was not convinced by her "charmings!" he could not resist her when she said:
"I think Guy's room is charming ... charming!"
He felt his room could be an absolute failure if from the ashes of its reputation he were alluded to actually for the first time as "Guy." Gone then was Mr. Hazlewood; fled were those odious "misses." He turned to Pauline and said, momentously, boldly:
"I say, Pauline, you haven't seen my new kitten."
She blushed, and Guy stood breathless with the attainment of the first peak. Then triumphantly he turned to Mrs. Grey:
"Monica and Margaret are very severe, aren't they?"
How easy it was, after all, and he wished he had addressed them directly by their christian names instead of taking refuge in a timid reference. Now all that was wanting for his pleasure was that Monica, Margaret, or Pauline should call him Guy. He wondered which would be the first. And vaguely he asked himself which he wanted to be the first.