tervened 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,"
sai