"No, indeed, don't thank me at all, for I cannot imagine anything that would give me such true pleasure. Let me see. Seven thousand pounds at four per cent., which I think is as much as you could expect to get safely. That's seventy times four--two hundred and eighty pounds a year."

"And Guy has some money--one hundred and fifty pounds, or one hundred and fifteen pounds, or it may be only fifty pounds."

"Let us call it a hundred pounds," said Miss Verney. "For it would be more prudent not to exaggerate. Three hundred and eighty pounds a year.

And I've no doubt the Rector on his side would be able to manage twenty pounds. Four hundred pounds a year. Surely a very nice little sum on which to marry. Oh, certainly quite a pleasant little sum."

"Only the gentleman hasn't given you the seven thousand pounds," said Pauline.

"No, exactly, he has not. That's just where it is," Miss Verney agreed.

"But even if he hasn't," said Pauline, springing up and kissing her, "that doesn't prevent your being my dear Miss Verney; and so, thank you seven times for every pound you were going to give me."

"My dear child, it would be, as I believe I remarked, a pleasure. I have the greatest dread of long engagements. My own, you know, lasted five years; and at the end of the time a misunderstanding arose with my father, who, being a sailor, had a hasty temper. This very misunderstanding arose over money. I'm sure the person who invented money was a great curse to the world, and deserved to be pecked at by that uncomfortable eagle much more than that poor fellow Prometheus, of whom I was reading in a mythology book that was given to me as a prize for spelling, and which I came across last night in an old trunk. My father declared that William.... His name; I believe I've never told you his name; his name was William Bankes, spelled with an E. Now, my own being Daisy after the ship which my father commanded at the moment when my poor mother ... when, in fact, I was born--my own name being Daisy, I was always a little doubtful as to whether people would laugh at the conjunction with Bankes, but being spelled with an E, I dare say it wouldn't have been uncomfortably remarked upon. My father said that William had deceived him about some money. Well, whatever it was, William broke off our engagement; and though all his presents were returned to him and all his letters, the miniature fell out of my hand when I was wrapping it up. I think I must have been a little upset at the moment, for I am not usually careless with any kind of ornament. And when I picked it up it was so cracked that I could scarcely bring myself to return it, feeling in a way ashamed of my carelessness and also wishing to keep something of William's by me. I have often blamed myself for doing this, and no doubt if the incident had occurred now when I am older, I should have acted more properly. However, at the time I was only twenty-four; so possibly there was a little excuse for what I did."

Miss Verney stopped and stared out of her window; all about the room the cats were purring in the sunbeams; Pauline had a dozen plans racing through her mind for finding William and bringing him back like Peter in Mrs. Gaskell's book. She was just half-way up the hill with fluttering heart, longing to see Miss Verney's joy at the return of her William ...

when tea tinkled in and the dream vanished.

When Pauline told Guy about Miss Verney's seven thousand pounds he was rather annoyed, and said he was sorry that he and she were already an object of charity in Wychford.

"Oh, Guy," she protested, "you mustn't take poor Miss Verney too seriously; but it was so sweet of her to want to set us up with an income."

"Besides I _have_ got a hundred and fifty," said Guy.

"Oh, Guy dear, don't look so cross. Please don't be cross and dreadfully in earnest about anything so stupid as money."

"I feel everybody will be pitying you for becoming engaged to a penniless pretender like me," he sighed.

"Don't be so stupid, Guy. If they pity anybody, they'll pity you for having a wife so utterly vague about practical things as I am. But I won't be, Guy, when we're married."

"Oh, my own, I wish we were married now. G.o.d! I wish, I wish we were!"

He had clasped her to him, and she drew away. Guy begged her pardon for swearing; but really she had drawn away because his eyes were so bright and wild that she was momentarily afraid of him.

August kept wet and stormy; but on the nineteenth, the day before Guy's birthday and the vigil of their betrothal, the sun came out with the fierceness of late Summer. Pauline went with Margaret and Monica for a walk in the corn-fields, because she and Guy, although it was one of their trysting-days, had each resolved to keep it strictly empty of the other's company, so that after a kind of fast they should meet on the great day itself with a deeper welcome. Pauline made a wreath of poppies for Margaret, and for Monica a wreath of cornflowers; but her sisters could find no flower that became Pauline on this vigil, nor did she mind, for to-morrow was beckoning to her across the wheat, and she gladly went ungarlanded.

"I wonder why I feel as if this were our last walk together," said Margaret.

"Oh, Margaret, how can you say a horrid thing like that?" Pauline exclaimed; and to-morrow drooped before her in the dusty path.

"No, darling, it's not horrid. But, oh, you don't know how much I mind that in a way the Rectory as it always has been will no longer be the Rectory."

Pauline vowed she would go home, not caring on whose wheat she trampled, if Margaret talked any more like that.

"I can't think why you want to make me sad," she protested. "What difference, after all, will this announcement of our engagement bring? I shall wear a ring, that's all!"

"But everybody will know you belong to Guy," said Margaret, "instead of to all of us."

"Oh, my dears, my dears," Pauline vowed, "I shall always belong to you as well! Don't make me feel unhappy."

"You don't really feel unhappy," said Monica in her wise way, "because every morning I can hear you singing to yourself long before you ought to be awake."

Then her sisters kissed her, and through the golden corn-fields they walked silently home.

When Pauline was in bed that night her mother lingered after Margaret and Monica had left her room.

"Are you glad, darling, you are going to give Guy such a charming birthday present to-morrow?" she asked.

"It's your present," said Pauline, "because I couldn't possibly give myself unless you wanted me to. You know that, don't you, Mother? You do know that, don't you?"

"I want you to be my happy Pauline," her mother whispered. "And I think that with Guy you will be my happy Pauline."

"Oh, Mother, I shall, I shall! I love him so. Mother, what about Father?

He simply won't say anything to me. To-day I helped him with transplanting, and I've been helping a lot lately ... with the daffodil bulbs when we came back from Ladingford, and all sorts of things. But he simply won't say a word."

"Francis is always like that," her mother replied. "Even when he first was in love with me. Really, he never proposed ... we somehow got married. I think the best thing will be for you and Guy to go up to his room after lunch to-morrow, before he goes out in the garden; then you can show him your ring."

"Oh, Mother, tell me what ring it is that Guy has found for me."

"It's charming ... charming ... charming," said her mother, enthusiastically.

"Oh, I won't ask, but I'm longing to see it. Mother, what do you think it will be? Oh, but you know, so I mustn't ask you to guess. Oh, I do hope Margaret and Monica will like it."

"It's charming ... charming ... and now go to sleep."

Her mother kissed her good night, and when she was gone Pauline took from under her pillow the crystal ring.

"However nice the new one is," she said, "I shall always love you best, you secret ring."

Then she got out of bed and took from her desk the ma.n.u.script book bound with a Siennese end-paper of shepherds and shepherdesses and rosy bowers, that was to be her birthday present to him.

"What poetry will he write in you about me, you funny empty book?" she asked, and inscribed it--

For Guy with all of his Pauline's love.

The book was left open for the roaming letters to dry themselves without a smudge, because there was never any blotting-paper in this desk that was littered with childish things. Then Pauline went to the window; but a gusty wind of late Summer was rustling the leaves and she could not stay dreaming on the night as in May she had dreamed. There was something faintly disquieting about this hollow wind which was like an envoy threatening the trees with the furious Winter to come, and Pauline shivered.

"Summer will soon be gone," she whispered, "but nowadays it doesn't matter, because all days will be happy."

On this thought she fell asleep, and woke to a sunny morning, though the sky was a turbid blue across which swollen clouds were steadily moving.

She lay watchful, wondering if this quiet time of six o'clock would hold the best of Guy's birthday and if by eight o'clock the sky would not be quite gray. It was a pity she and Guy had not arranged to meet early, so that before the day was spoiled they should have possessed themselves of its prime. Pauline could no longer stay in bed with this sunlight, the lucid shadows of which, caught from the wistaria leaves, were flickering all about the room. She must go to the window and salute his birthday.

Suddenly she recalled something Guy had once said of how he pictured her always moving round her room in the morning like a small white cloud.

Blushful at the intimacy of the thought, she looked at herself in the gla.s.s.

"You're his! You're his!" she whispered to her image. "Are you a white goose, as Margaret said you were? Or are you the least bit like a cloud?"

Guy came and knelt by her in church that morning, and she took his action as the sign he offered to the world of holding her now openly. In the great church they were kneeling; rose-fired both of them by the crimson gowns of the high saints along the clerestory; and then Guy slipped upon her finger the new ring he had bought for their engagement, a pink topaz set in the old fashion, which burned there like the heart of the rosy fire in which they knelt suffused.

Breakfast was to be in the garden, as all Rectory birthdays were except Monica's, which fell in January; and since the day had ripened to a kind of sweet sultriness as of a pear that has hung too long upon a wall, it was grateful to sit in the shade of the weeping-willow by the side of the lily-pond. To each floating cup, tawny or damasked, white or deepest cramoisy, the Rector called their attention. Nymphaeas they were to him, fountain divinities that one after the other he flattered with courteous praise. When Guy had been given all his presents Pauline saw her father put a hand in his coat and pull out a small book.