Four Gates by Amy Le Feuvre

"Oh Gift of God, a perfect day, Whereon let no man work, but play Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be. " LONGFELLOW.

THE Easter holidays found Audrey still at Horsborough College. Neither she nor Mrs. Bonar left their post, as they had several small boys spending their holidays with them. But as the summer came on, Audrey again began to wonder where she should go when school broke up. A letter from Mr. Blunt saying that his sister-in-law was going abroad with her husband again, and so leaving her house, and also reminding her that her lease of her old home would be up on Michaelmas Day, decided her to take lodgings in the village. And she wrote to Pauline about finding her cheap rooms near her. She had just posted her letter when Miss Vernon called upon her.

"Well," she remarked in her abrupt way, "are you, like the rest of us, going to shake off this scholastic veneer which is making us so objectionably priggish? What are your plans? Every term I am hoping that Everard, may be offered some deanery. He has been here too long."

"Oh! " cried Audrey. "He is not old enough or feeble enough to retire into a deanery."

"Stuff, my dear! He ought to be a dean or a bishop before long, and I'm expecting to end my days in an ecclesiastical palace: I am hinting at it already in my biography of him. We don't want decrepit bishops, and I think the authorities are waking up to that fact. But we won't talk about Everard. I have to come to ask you if you would care to join me in a small tour through Switzerland? I should like to have you with me, and I ask you as my guest."

Audrey's eyes sparkled.

"How good of you! I have never been abroad in my life. But I should prefer it if you would let me share expenses. Would it be a very expensive trip?"

"My dear, the expense will be mine. I want a companion. Everard may be with us for a part of the time, but he is going to Germany first, and I have declined to accompany him there. I don't like the Germans. I never did. You and I will try to imagine for the first time, whilst we are away, that there is no such thing as a boy, or football, or exam., in the world! I am getting heartily sick of the whole crew!"

"The only thing is," said Audrey hesitatingly, "that I must go down and make arrangements for the sale of the furniture of my old home. When do you start?"

"I shall be a fortnight in London first. Will that give you time?"

"I think so. Oh, Miss Vernon, how can I thank you? I've never had such a treat! I can hardly believe I am going."

Miss Vernon laughed.

"Ah, well, I'm more selfish than you think. All my life I have dreaded getting old and prosy, and I want someone to keep me young, or make me feel so, at all events. You will be very good company. I am assured of that."

So Audrey wrote a second letter to Pauline, telling her of her good fortune, and a shadow fell across Pauline's sunny eyes as she read. She was fonder of Audrey than of anyone else, and the thought of having her near her for the summer holidays had been real and keen delight. But, as usual, she suppressed her own feelings and wrote back a warm, loving letter.

"It will be splendid for you in every way," she wrote. "I shall look forward to your letters, for if you write as descriptively as you do about the school, I shall imagine myself with you in it all. And your fortnight here first will be a real joy to me."

"Poor Pauline! " mused Audrey. "Why should the good things of life always pass her by? I used to think myself the most ill-used of human beings, but I can't say that now. And yet, compared with Pauline, I am not nearly so happy as she is. What a wonderful nature she must have, to live year in and year out in a sick-room and yet keep that glad, joyous nature of hers! She finds as much pleasure in a sunny day, and in the flowers and the birds, as I would in a foreign tour. She faces north, and never flinches from it."

Pauline found her rooms in the village. It was an empty time. No tourists came to stay at Criscombe, for there was nothing to draw them-neither sea nor moor, and no good fishing within reach.

Mr. Broughton and family had just gone for a month to the seaside. A locum tenens from the neighbouring town rode over every Sunday to take the services.

Mrs. Daventry was abroad. Even the Blunts had gone away for their summer outing, and Mr. Danby was the only one who still came and went in his erratic fashion. Just now, he had started a caravan to take him about the country for his lectures. Pauline had asked him why he preferred such a slow mode of locomotion to that of a motor. His answer was characteristic of himself:

"Miss Erskine, pace is the curse of our age! If I give out, I must take in; and food does you no good if gobbled. Can I lecture on the beauties and lessons of Nature, which is my next subject, if I rush through the air, besmattering and befouling the sweet country lanes with fumes of petrol and clouds of dust? I am going to learn before I teach, and my caravan will aid me to do so."