She lifted her dark eyes to his face. "Will you?" she cried. "Oh I hope you do! I can't help it. It means so much to me. Ask me just sometimes, Paul."
"Will you write to me at Cambridge?" he demanded.
She shook her head. "No," she said decidedly, "not yet, anyway. I can't write good enough letters for one thing, and for another you mustn't waste your time on me."
Paul stood considering her. He had an idea, but he was in truth rather frightened of it. It seemed to be going too far. But his desire won the battle with his caution. "Would you give me a photograph of yourself to take to Cambridge?" he asked.
"But you've something--a snapshot, anything," he pressed eagerly.
She smiled radiantly and suddenly. "I've a rubbishy old thing they took on the river at Hampton Court last August," she said, "but my hair was down then."
"That'll be lovely!" he cried. "Do give me that."
Paul's letters were not many, and fairly common property at the family breakfast table. He sought for an escape from that. "Will you be at the prayer meeting to-night?" he asked.
"Well, so shall I. In fact, I'm leading it. Write me a little letter and give it me afterwards, will you?"
She nodded. Neither of them were aware of incongruity. Possibly they were right, and there was none.
Paul's bedroom was a big attic at the top of the Vicarage, running the whole width of the house. It was entirely characteristic of him. In one corner was a large home-made cage for a pair of ring-doves, with a space in front for their perambulations, fitted with convenient perches. Under the window was what had been an aquarium, but was now, after many vicissitudes, temporarily doing duty as a vivarium. It was a third full of sand and pebbles and soil, and contained plants and a shallow pool of water, constituting, in its owner's imagination, a section of African forest for three water-tortoises, a family of green tree-frogs, and some half-developed tadpoles. Above a writing-desk was a bookshelf full of cheap editions of the English classics, purchased largely with prize money won by literary efforts in his school magazine. The books are worth reviewing, for his father's well-stocked shelves of Evangelical theology held none such. The great English poets were all there, with Carlyle, Emerson, Lamb, Machiavelli, Locke, Macaulay, and a further miscellaneous host. A smaller bookshelf held MSS. books--three slim volumes of his own verse, one of acrostics suitable for children's addresses, several of sermon notes, another of special hymns, choruses and tunes, and two of essays and short stories which had not seen the light in printer's ink. Paul would have added "as yet." Bound volumes of his school magazine shone resplendent in leather, and were sprinkled interiorly with his verse and prose. There were fencing sticks in a corner, and framed shooting and cadet groups. A cabinet contained glass jars and medicine bottles of chemicals, and a much-prized retort stood above it. The mantelpiece was fairly full with phials of spirit that had a home there, and in which had been preserved an embryo dog-fish, a newt with three legs, a small grass-snake, a treasured scorpion (the gift of an African missionary), and the like. Lastly, over the bed was a text. That, principally of all these treasures, was to go with its owner to Cambridge.