Alick and Rachel could not but exchange a glance, and at the same moment, emerging through the screen of shrubs on the lawn, Bessie Keith, Conrade, Francis, and Leoline, were seen each with a mallet in hand and a gay ball in readiness to be impelled through the hoops that beset the lawn.
“And you really are learning croquet!” exclaimed innocent Grace; “well, it makes a beautiful ground.”
“Croquet!” exclaimed poor Lady Temple, with startled eyes; “you don’t really mean that it is croquet! O Bessie, Bessie!”
“Ah! I didn’t mean you to have come so soon,” said the much amused Bessie, as she gave her hand in greeting. “I meant the prejudice to be first conquered. See, dear Lady Temple, I’m not ashamed; this whitey brown moustache is going to kiss me nevertheless and notwithstanding.”
And so it certainly did, and smiled into the bargain, while the boys came clamouring up, and after thanks for Don’s preservation, began loudly to beg mamma would come, they could not make up their sides without her, but mamma was distressed and unhappy.
“Not now, my dears—I must—I must. Indeed I did not know.”
“Now, Alick, I trust to your generosity,” said Bessie, finding that they must be pacified. “Coming, Con—Come, Grace, come and convince Lady Temple that the pastime is not too wicked for you.”
“Indeed, Alick,” Lady Temple was saying. “I am very sorry, I won’t allow it one moment if you think it is objectionable.”
“But I don’t,” said Alick, smiling. “Far from it. It is a capital game for you and your boys.”
“I thought—I thought you disapproved and could not bear it,” said Lady Temple, wondering and wistful.
“Can’t bear is not disapprove. Indeed,” seeing that gentle earnest alone could console her, “there is no harm in the game itself. It is a wholly personal distaste, arising from my having been bored with it when I was ill and out of spirits.”
“But is not there something about it in Punch?” she still asked, so anxiously, that it was impossible not to smile; but there was not a particle of that subdued mockery that was often so perplexing in him, as he replied, “Certainly there is about its abuse as an engine for flirtation, which, to tell you the truth, was what sickened me with the sight at Littleworthy; but that is not the line Con and Francie will take just yet. Why, my uncle is specially addicted to listening to croquet, and knows by the step and sound how each player is getting on, till he is quite an oracle in disputed hits.”
“So Bessie told me,” said Fanny, still feeling that she had been taken in and the brother unkindly used; “but I can’t think how she could, when you don’t like it.”
“Nobody is bound to respect foolish prejudices,” said Alick, still quite in earnest. “It would have been very absurd not to introduce it.”
“Come, Alick,” said Bessie, advancing, “have you absolved her, and may we begin? Would it not be a generous act of amnesty if all the present company united in a match?”
“Too many,” said Alick, “odd numbers. I shall go down and call on Miss Williams. May I come back, Lady Temple, and have a holiday from the mess?”
“I shall be very glad; only I am afraid there is no dinner.”
“So much the better. Only let me see you begin, or I shall never dare to express an opinion for the future.”
“Mamma, do pray, pray begin; the afternoon is wasting like nothing!” cried Conrade of the much-tried patience. “And Aunt Rachel,” he added, in his magnanimity, “you shall be my partner, and I’ll teach you.”
“Thank you, Conrade, but I can’t; I promised to be at home at four,” said Rachel, who had all this time been watching with curious interest which influence would prevail—whether Alick would play for Fanny’s sake, or Fanny abstain for Alick’s sake. She was best satisfied as it was, but she had still to parry Bessie Keith’s persuasive determination. Why would she go home? it certainly was to inspect the sketches of the landscape painter. “You heard, Alick, of the interesting individual who acted the part of Rachel’s preserver,” she added.
The very force of Rachel’s resolution not to be put out of countenance served to cover her with the most uncomfortable blushes, all the more at the thought of her own unlucky exclamation. “I came here,” said Alick, coolly, “to assist in recovering the beloved remains from a watery grave;” and then, as Bessie insisted on hearing the Avoncester version, he gave it; while Grace added the intelligence that the hero was a clergyman, sinking the opinions, as too vague to be mentioned, even had not the company been too flighty for a subject she thought serious and painful. “And he is at this moment sketching the Spinster’s Needles!” said Bessie. “Well, I am consoled. With all your resolve to flatten down an adventure, fate is too strong for you. Something will come of it. Is not the very resolve that it shall not be an adventure a token?”
“If anyone should wish to forget it, it is you, I think, Bessie,” said Alick. “Your admirable sagacity seems to have been at fault. I thought you prided yourself on your climbing.”
“Up a slippery perpendicular—”
“I know the place,” he gravely answered.
“Well,” exclaimed Bessie, recovering herself, “I am not a mermaid nor even a dear gazelle, and, in my humble opinion, there was far more grace in preventing heroism from being ‘unwept, unnoticed, and unsung,’ than in perilling my own neck, craning down and strangling the miserable beast, by pulling him up by the scrough of his neck! What an introduction would have been lost!”
“If you are going to play, Bessie,” said her brother, “it would be kind
