We may now, I think, go back to our four friends, as they walked out upon the lawn. They were understood to be on a mission to assist Mrs Dale in the picking of the peas; but pleasure intervened in the way of business, and the young people, forgetting the labours of their elder, allowed themselves to be carried away by the fascinations of croquet. The iron hoops and the sticks were fixed. The mallets and the balls were lying about; and then the party was so nicely made up! 'I haven't had a game of croquet yet,' said Mr Crosbie. It cannot be said that he had lost much time, seeing that he had only arrived before dinner on the preceding day. And then the mallets were in their hands in a moment.
'We'll play sides, of course,' said Lily. 'Bernard and I'll play together.' But this was not allowed. Lily was well known to be the queen of the croquet ground; and as Bernard was supposed to be more efficient than his friend, Lily had to take Mr Crosbie as her partner. 'Apollo can't get through the hoops,' Lily said afterwards to her sister; 'but then how gracefully he fails to do it!' Lily, however, had been beaten, and may therefore be excused for a little spite against her partner. But it so turned out that before Mr Crosbie took his final departure from Allington he could get through the hoops; and Lily, though she was still queen of the croquet ground, had to acknowledge a male sovereign in that dominion.
'That's not the way we played at—' said Crosbie, at one point of the game, and then stopped himself.
'Where was that?' said Bernard.
'A place I was at last summer,—in Shropshire.'
'Then they don't play the game, Mr Crosbie, at the place you were at last summer,—in Shropshire,' said Lily.
'You mean Lady Hartletop's,' said Bernard. Now, the Marchioness of Hartletop was a very great person indeed, and a leader in the fashionable world.
'Oh! Lady Hartletop's!' said Lily. 'Then I suppose we must give in;' which little bit of sarcasm was not lost upon Mr Crosbie, and was put down by him in the tablets of his mind as quite undeserved. He had endeavoured to avoid any mention of Lady Hartletop and her croquet ground, and her ladyship's name had been forced upon him. Nevertheless, he liked Lily Dale through it all. But he thought that he liked Bell the best, though she said little; for Bell was the beauty of the family.
During the game Bernard remembered that they had especially come over to bid the three ladies to dinner at the house on that day. They had all dined there on the day before, and the girls' uncle had now sent directions to them to come again. 'I'll go and ask mamma about it,' said Bell, who was out first. And then she returned, saying, that she and her sister would obey their uncle's behest; but that her mother would prefer to remain at home. 'There are the peas to be eaten, you know,' said Lily.
'Send them up to the Great House,' said Bernard.
'Hopkins would not allow it,' said Lily. 'He calls that a mixing of things. Hopkins doesn't like mixings.' And then when the game was over, they sauntered about, out of the small garden into the larger one, and through the shrubberies, and out upon the fields, where they found the still lingering remnants of the haymaking. And Lily took a rake, and raked for two minutes; and Mr Crosbie, making an attempt to pitch the hay into the cart, had to pay half-a-crown for his footing to the hay-makers; and Bell sat quiet under a tree, mindful of her complexion; whereupon Mr Crosbie, finding the hay-pitching not much to his taste, threw himself under the same tree also, quite after the manner of Apollo, as Lily said to her mother late in the evening. Then Bernard covered Lily with hay, which was a great feat in the jocose way for him; and Lily in returning the compliment, almost smothered Mr Crosbie,—by accident.
'Oh, Lily,' said Bell.
'I'm sure I beg your pardon, Mr Crosbie. It was Bernard's fault. Bernard, I never will come into a hayfield with you again.' And so they all became very intimate; while Bell sat quietly under the tree, listening to a word or two now and then as Mr Crosbie chose to speak them. There is a kind of enjoyment to be had in society, in which very few words are necessary. Bell was less vivacious than her sister Lily; and when, an hour after this, she was dressing herself for dinner, she acknowledged that she had passed a pleasant afternoon, though Mr Crosbie had not said very much.
III. The Widow Dale of Allington
As Mrs Dale, of the Small House, was not a Dale by birth, there can be no necessity for insisting on the fact that none of the Dale peculiarities should be sought for in her character. These peculiarities were not, perhaps, very conspicuous in her daughters, who had taken more in that respect from their mother than from their father; but a close observer might recognise the girls as Dales. They were constant, perhaps obstinate, occasionally a little uncharitable in their judgment, and prone to think that there was a great deal in
