_No, I do not remember a man called Grey in my time at Oxford, but I do remember a man of the same name as ours at Trinity. He came to grief, I believe, later on. You must assure your friend that this was not myself. I am glad you find the Rector and his wife such pleasant people. Have they any children? I wish I could say as much for the new Vicar of Galton, who is a pompous nincompoop and has introduced a lot of this High Church frippery which so annoys some of the parents. Your friend is lucky to be able to afford so much leisure for gardening. I am of course far too busy to think about anything like that except in the summer holidays, when flowers would scarcely give me the change of air I want. This year I hope to come and see you for a week or two, and we shall be able to discuss the future. Don't work too hard and please oblige me by acknowledging the enclosed cheque._ _Your affectionate father John Hazlewood._ Guy went out in the orchard to meditate upon the advisableness of telling his father at once about Pauline. If he were coming to stay here next August, he ought to know beforehand, for it would be horrid to have the atmosphere of Plashers Mead ruined by acrimonious argument. August, however, was still a long way off, and now there was going to be fine weather for a while, which must not be spoilt. Besides, perhaps in the end his father would not come, and anyway himself would be having to decide presently upon a more definite step. He would tell Pauline, when he saw her to-morrow, that he ought to go up to London and get some journalistic work so as to bring the time of their marriage nearer. Or should he wait until he had sounded Michael about that academy? Plashers Mead enlarged itself for Guy's vision until the orchard was a quadrangle framed with grey cloisters, along which Parnassian aspirants walked in meditation. Would any of them be married except himself and Pauline? On the whole he decided that they would not, though of course, if Michael were to find the capital he must be allowed to marry. How the Balliol people would laugh at these fantastic plans, thought Guy, and he stopped for a moment from the architectonics of his academy to laugh at himself. Certainly it would be better not to publish his plans even to Pauline until they showed a hint of conceivable maturity. Guy fell back into the comfort of spacious dreams, wandering up and down the orchard; and round about him the starlings pranked in metallic plumage of green and bronze quarrelled over the holes in the apple-trees they coveted for their nests. Suddenly Guy heard his name called and looking up he saw across the mill-stream Margaret and Pauline standing in the churchyard.