She invited him with her muff and seemed to float out of sight. Suddenly Guy remembered that sometime this morning (it seemed as long ago as when Wychford Abbey was alive) Bob had been with him. He was glad of an excuse to go back and look for the dog in those now consecrated arbours. There the robin still sang his rather pensive tune; and there from a high ash-bough a missel-thrush, wearing full ermine of the Spring, saluted the vestal day. _February_ Pauline started to Oxford with Monica, feeling rather disappointed she had not seen Guy before she went; for Margaret had come home with news of having walked with him to Fairfield, and it was tantalizing, indeed a little disturbing, to leave him behind with Margaret. "Nothing is said to Margaret," Pauline protested at lunch, "when _she_ goes out for a walk with Guy. Father, don't you think it's unfair?" "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 Olgae. My dears, you remember that anaemic magenta brute, the colour 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 behaviour 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." "Well, I hate staying with people," Monica explained. "So do I," said Pauline. "And you accepted the invitation for me that day you were in Oxford buying Christmas presents, when you forgot to buy the patience-cards I wanted to give poor Miss Verney, so that I had to give her a horrid little china dog though she hates dogs." "Now I'm sure it'll be charming, yes, charming, when you get there," Mrs. Grey affirmed hopefully. "Oh, how glad I am I'm not going," said Margaret. "I think you ought to go instead of me," Pauline told her. "They're not my friends," Margaret replied with a shrug.