"Well, darling Pauline," interrupted Mrs. Grey, with an anxious glance towards her second daughter, "you see, Margaret is in a way engaged."
"I'm not engaged," Margaret declared.
"But I'm asking Father," Pauline persisted. "Father, don't you think it's unfair?"
The Rector was turning over the pages of a seed-catalogue and answered Pauline's question with that engaging irrelevancy to which his family and parish were accustomed.
"It's disgraceful for these people to offer seeds of Incarvillea olgæ. My dears, you remember that anemic magenta brute, the color of a washed-out shirt? Ah," he sighed, "I wish they'd get that yellow Incarvillea over. I am tempted to fancy it might be as good as Tecoma Smithii, and, of course, coming from that Yang-tse-kiang country, it would be hardy."
"Francis dear!" Pauline cried. "Don't you think it's unfair?"
"Pauline," said her mother, "you must not call your father Francis in the dining-room."
The Rector, oblivious of everything, continued to turn slowly the pages of his catalogue.
"Oh, bother going to Oxford!" said Monica, looking out of the window to where Janet with frozen breath listened for the omnibus under gathering snow-clouds.
"Now, really," Pauline exclaimed, diverted from her complaint of Margaret's behavior by another injustice, "isn't Monica too bad? She's grumbling, though it was she who made the plan to stay with the Strettons. And though they're her friends and not mine, I've been made to go, too."