Page:The Small House at Allington Vol 1.djvu/28

18 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