Then suddenly the weather changed. The country sparkled with hoar-frost, and everybody forgot about the rain, asking if ever before such weather had been known for Christmas. Guy was invited to dinner at the Rectory, and Pauline forgot about her problems in the pleasure that the jolly afternoon brought. Self-consciousness under the critical glances of Monica and Margaret vanished in the atmosphere of intimacy shed by the occasion. She could laugh and make a great noise without being reproved, and Guy himself was obviously more at home than he had ever been. There seemed a likelihood that now, once again the progress of simple friendship would advance undisturbed by the complications of love, and Pauline was glad to be able to assure herself that Guy did not that afternoon display the slightest sign of a hopeless passion for Margaret. He was more in his mood and demeanor of last month, and diverted them greatly with an account of struggling to explain to Graves, the deaf-and-dumb gardener, what he wanted done in the garden. "But didn't Birdwood help you?" they asked, laughing. "Well, Birdwood showed me what I ought to do," said Guy. "But it seemed such a rough method of information that I hadn't the heart to adopt it. You see, as far as I could make out, it consisted of pulling up a cabbage by the root, hitting Graves on the head with it, and then nodding violently. That meant 'clear away these cabbages,' Or if Birdwood wanted to say, 'Plant broccoli here,' he dug Graves in the ribs with the dibbler and rubbed his nose in the unthinned seedlings." "What does Miss Peasey say?" asked Pauline, who was in a state of the highest amusement, because deaf-and-dumb Graves was one of the villagers who lived under her particular patronage. "Well, at first Miss Peasey was rather huffed, because she thought Graves was mocking her by pretending to be deaf. Now, however, she comes out and watches him at work and hopes that next Spring there'll be a little more variety in the garden." The sunny, sparkling weather lasted for a few days after Christmas; and one morning Pauline, walking by herself on Wychford down, met Guy. "I wondered if I should see you," he said. "Did you expect to see me, then?" "Well, I knew you often came here, and this morning I couldn't resist coming here myself." Pauline felt a sudden impulse to run away; and yet most unaccountably the impulse led her into walking along with Guy at a brisk pace over the close-cropped glittering turf. Round them trotted Bob in eddies of endless motion. "Listen," said Guy. "I'm sure I heard a lark singing." They stopped, and Pauline thought that never was there so sweet a silence as here upon the summit of this green down. Guy's lark could not be heard. There was not even the faint wind that sighs across high country. There was nothing but gorse and turf and a turquoise sky floating on silver deeps and distances above the Winter landscape.