adventures of mind, body, or spirit.  Life at the Rectory had a kind of graceful austerity like the well-proportioned Rectory itself.  If Mark had bothered to analyze the cause of this graceful austerity, he might have found it in the personality of the Rector’s elder sister Miriam.  Even at Meade Cantorum, when he was younger, Mark had been fully conscious of her qualities; but here they found a background against which they could display themselves more perfectly.  When they moved from Buckinghamshire and the new rector was seeing how much Miriam appreciated the new surroundings, he sold out some stock and presented her with enough ready money to express herself in the outward beauty of the Rectory’s refurbishing.  He was luckily not called upon to spend a great deal on the church, both his predecessors having maintained the fabric with care, and the fabric itself being sound enough and magnificent enough to want no more than that.  Miriam, though shaking one of those capable and well-tended fingers at her beloved brother’s extravagance, accepted the gift with an almost childish determination to give full value of beauty in return, so that there should not be a servant’s bedroom nor a cupboard nor a corridor that did not display the evidence of her appreciation in loving care.  The garden was handed over to Mrs. Ogilvie, who as soon as May warmed its high enclosures bloomed there like one of her own favourite peonies, rosy of face and fragrant, ample of girth, golden-hearted.

Outside the Rectory Mark spent most of his time with Richard Ford, the son of the Vicar of Little Fairfield, with whom he went to work in the autumn after his arrival in Oxfordshire.  Here again Mark was lucky, for Richard, who was a year or two older than himself and a student at Cooper’s Hill whence he would emerge as a civil engineer bound for India, was one of those entirely admirable young men who succeed in being saintly without any rapture or righteousness.

Mark said one day: 

“Rector, you know, Richard Ford really is a saint; only for goodness’ sake don’t tell him I said so, because he’d be furious.”

The Rector stopped humming a joyful Miserere to give Mark an assurance of his discretion.  But Mark having said so much in praise of Richard could say no more, and indeed he would have found it hard to express in words what he felt about his friend.

Mark accompanied Richard on his visits to Wychford Rectory where in this fortunate corner of England existed a third perfect family.  Richard was deeply in love with Margaret Grey, the second daughter, and if Mark had ever been intended to fall in love he would certainly have fallen in love with Pauline, the youngest daughter, who was fourteen.

“I could look at her for ever,” he confided in Richard.  “Walking down the road from Wych-on-the-Wold this morning I saw two blue butterflies on a wild rose, and they were like Pauline’s eyes and the rose was like her cheek.”