Caroline and Annie Cheviot were ladylike, nice-looking girls; but when they found no croquet mallets in the garden, they seemed at a loss what life had to offer at Stoneborough! Gertrude pronounced that ‘she played at it sometimes at Maplewood, where she had nothing better to do,’ and then retreated to her own devices. Ethel’s heart sank both with dread of the afternoon, and with self-reproach at her spoilt child’s discourtesy, whence she knew there would be no rousing her without an incapacitating discussion; and on she wandered in the garden with the guests, receiving instruction where the hoops might be planted, and hearing how nice it would be for her sister to have such an object, such a pleasant opportunity of meeting one’s friends—an interest for every day. ‘No wonder they think I want an object in life,’ thought Ethel; ‘how awfully tiresome I must be! Poor things, what can I say to make it pleasanter?—Do you know this Dielytra? I think it is the prettiest of modern flowers, but I wish we might call it Japan fumitory, or by some English name.’
‘I used to garden once, but we have no flower-beds now, they spoilt the lawn for croquet.’
‘And here comes Tom,’ thought Ethel; ‘poor Tom, he will certainly be off to London this evening.’
Tom, however, joined the listless promenade; and the first time croquet was again mentioned, observed that he had seen the Andersons knocking about the balls in the new gardens by the river; and proposed to go down and try to get up a match. There was an instant brightening, and Tom stepped into the drawing-room, and told Daisy to come with them.
‘To play at croquet with the Andersons in the tea-gardens!’ she exclaimed. ‘No, I thank you, Thomas!’
He laid his hand on her shoulder—’Gertrude,’ he said, ‘it is time to have done being a spoilt baby. If you let Ethel fag herself ill, you will rue it all your life.’
Frightened, but without clear comprehension, she turned two scared eyes on him, and replaced the hat that she had thrown on the table, just as Ethel and the others came in.
‘Not you, Ethel,’ said Tom; ‘you don’t know the game.’
‘I can learn,’ said Ethel, desperately bent on her duty.
‘We would teach you,’ volunteered the Cheviots.
‘You would not undertake it if you knew better,’ said Tom, smiling. ‘Ethel’s hands are not her strong point.’
‘Ethel would just have to be croqued all through by her partner,’ said Gertrude.
‘Besides, my father will be coming in and wanting you,’ added Tom; ‘he is only at the hospital or somewhere about the town. I’ll look after this child.’
And the two sisters, delighted that poor little Gertrude should have such a holiday treat as croquet in the public gardens, away from her governess elder sister, walked off glorious; while Ethel, breathing forth a heavy sigh, let herself sink into a chair, feeling as if the silence were in itself invaluable, and as if Tom could not be enough thanked for having gained it for her.
She was first roused by the inquiry, ‘Shall I take in this letter, ma’am? it is charged four shillings over-weight. And it is for Mr. Thomas, ma’am,’ impressively concluded the parlour-maid, as one penetrated by Mr. Thomas’s regard to small economies.
Ethel beheld a letter bloated beyond the capacities of the two bewigged Washingtons that kept guard in its corner, and addressed in a cramped hand unknown to her; but while she hesitated, her eye fell on another American letter directed to Miss Mary May, in Averil Ward’s well-known writing, and turning both round, she found they had the same post-mark, and thereupon paid the extra charge, and placed the letter where Tom was most likely to light naturally on it without public comment. The other letter renewed the pang at common property being at an end. ‘No, Mab,’ she said, taking the little dog into her lap, ‘we shall none of us hear a bit of it! But at least it is a comfort that this business is over! You needn’t creep under sofas now, there’s nobody to tread upon your dainty little paws. What is to be done, Mab, to get out of a savage humour—except thinking how good-natured poor Tom is!’
There was not much sign of savage humour in the face that was lifted up as Dr. May came in from the hospital, and sitting down by his daughter, put his arm round her. ‘So there’s another bird flown,’ he said. ‘We shall soon have the old nest to ourselves, Ethel.’
‘The Daisy is not going just yet,’ said Ethel, stroking back the thin flying flakes over his temples. ‘If we may believe her, never!’
‘Ah! she will be off before we can look round,’ said the Doctor; ‘when once the trick of marrying gets among one’s girls, there’s no end to it, as long as they last out.’
‘Nor to one’s boys going out into the world,’ said Etheclass="underline" both of them talking as if she had been his wife, rather than one of these fly-away younglings herself.
‘Ah! well,’ he said, ‘it’s very pretty while it lasts, and one keeps the creatures; but after all, one doesn’t rear them for one’s own pleasure. That only comes by the way of their chance good-will to one.’
‘For shame, Doctor!’ said Ethel, pretending to shake him by the collar.
‘I was thinking,’ he added, ‘that we must not require too much. People must have their day, and in their own fashion; and I wish you would tell Tom—I’ve no patience to do it myself—that I don’t mean to hamper him. As long as it is a right line, he may take whichever he pleases, and I’ll do my best to set him forward in it; but it is a pity—’
‘Perhaps a few years of travelling, or of a professorship, might give him time to think differently,’ said Ethel.
‘Not he,’ said the Doctor; ‘the more a man lives in the world, the more he depends on it. Where is the boy? is he gone without vouchsafing a good-bye?’
‘Oh no, he has taken pity on Annie and Caroline Cheviot’s famine of croquet, and gone with them to the gardens.’
‘A spice of flirtation never comes amiss to him.’
‘There, that’s the way!’ said Ethel, half-saucily, half-caressingly; ‘that poor fellow never can do right! Isn’t it the very thing to keep him away from home, that we all may steal a horse, and he can’t look over the wall, no, not with a telescope?’
‘I can’t help it, Ethel. It may be very wrong and unkind of me—Heaven forgive me if it is, and prevent me from doing the boy any harm! but I never can rid myself of a feeling of there being something behind when he seems the most straightforward. If he had only not got his grandfather’s mouth and nose! And,’ smiling after all—’I don’t know what I said to be so scolded; all lads flirt, and you can’t deny that Master Tom divided his attentions pretty freely last year between Mrs. Pugh and poor Ave Ward.’
‘This time, I believe, it was out of pure kindness to me,’ said Ethel, ‘so I am bound to his defence. He dragged off poor Daisy to chaperon them, that I might have a little peace.’
‘Ah! he came down on us this morning,’ said the Doctor, ‘on Richard and Flora and me, and gave us a lecture on letting you grow old, Ethel—said you were getting over-tasked, and no one heeding it; and looking—let’s look’—and he took off his spectacles, put his hand on her shoulder, and studied her face.
‘Old enough to be a respectable lady of the house, I hope,’ said Ethel.
‘Wiry enough for most things,’ said the Doctor, patting her shoulder, reassured; ‘but we must take care, Ethel; if you don’t fatten yourself up, we shall have Flora coming and carrying you off to London for a change, and for Tom to practise on.