"Oh, Pauline would like you. Pauline's the youngest, you know," added Guy. "And I'm pretty certain you'd like Monica."
Michael laughed.
"Really, Guy, I must tell them in Balliol that since you went down you've become an idle matchmaker. Good-by."
"Good-by. You're sure you won't mind the fag of forwarding my bicycle? I'll send you a post-card from Oldbridge."
Guy, although there was still more than a week before he would see Pauline, felt, as he hurried towards the boat-builder's moorings, that he would see her within an hour, such airy freedom did the realization of being on his way give to his limbs.
The journey to Wychford seemed effortless, for whatever the arduousness of a course steadily up-stream, it was nullified by the knowledge that every time the paddle was dipped into the water it brought him by his own action nearer to Pauline. A railway journey would have given him none of this endless anticipation, traveling through what at this time of the year, before the season of boating, was a delicious solitude. Guy could sing all the way if he wished, for there was nothing but buttercups and daisies, lambs and meadows and greening willows, to overlook his progress. He glided beneath ancient bridges and rested at ancient inns, nearer every night to Pauline. Scarcely had such days a perceptible flight, and were not May Morning marked in flame on his mind's calendar, he could have forgotten time in this slow, undated diminution.
"O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Oh, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know."
This was the song Guy flung before his prow to the vision of Pauline leading him.
"What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure."
This was the song that Guy felt Shakespeare might have written to suit his journey now, as he paddled higher and higher up the stream that flowed towards Shakespeare's own country.