“Fell in” with them; became inseparable for a week; and now were stealing a march,—­dodging them,—­lest there might be an overcrowding of the stage, and an impossibility of getting outside seats!  Mrs. Thoresby was a woman of an imposing elegance and dignity, with her large curls of resplendent gray hair high up on her temples, her severely-handsome dark eyebrows, and her own perfect, white teeth; yet she could do a shabby thing, you see,—­a thing made shabby by its motive.  The Devreaux and Klines were only “floating people,” boarding about,—­not permanently valuable as acquaintances; well enough to know when one met them,—­that was all.  Mrs. Thoresby had daughters; she was obliged to calculate as to what was worth while.  Mrs. Linceford had an elegant establishment in New York; she had young sisters to bring out; there was suitability here; and the girls would naturally find themselves happy together.

Dakie Thayne developed brilliantly at croquet.  He and Leslie, with Etty Thoresby, against Imogen and the Haddens, swept triumphantly around the course, and came in to the stake, before there had been even a “rover” upon the other side.  Except, indeed, as they were sent roving, away off over the bank and down the road, from the sloping, uneven ground,—­the most extraordinary field, in truth, on which croquet was ever attempted.  But then you cannot expect a level, velvet lawn on the side of a mountain.

“Children always get the best of it at croquet,—­when they know anything at all,” said Imogen Thoresby discontentedly, throwing down her mallet.  “You ‘poked’ awfully, Etty.”

Etty began an indignant denial; unable to endure the double accusation of being a child,—­she, a girl in her fourteenth year,—­and of “poking.”  But Imogen walked away quite unconcernedly, and Jeannie Hadden followed her.  These two, as nearest in age, were growing intimate.  Ginevra was almost too old,—­she was twenty.

They played a four-ball game then; Leslie and Etty against Elinor and Dakie Thayne.  But Elinor declared—­laughing, all the same, in her imperturbably good-natured way—­that not only Etty’s pokes were against her, but that Dakie would not croquet Leslie’s ball downhill.  Nothing ever really put Elinor Hadden out, the girls said of her, except when her hair wouldn’t go up; and then it was funny to see her.  It was a sunbeam in a snarl, or a snow flurry out of a blue sky.  This in parenthesis, however; it was quite true, as she alleged, that Dakie Thayne had taken up already that chivalrous attitude toward Leslie Goldthwaite which would not let him act otherwise than as her loyal knight, even though opposed to her at croquet.

“You’ll have enough of that boy,” said Mrs. Linceford, when Leslie came in, and found her at her window that overlooked the wickets.  “There’s nothing like a masculine creature of that age for adoring and monopolizing a girl two or three years older.  He’ll make you mend his gloves, and he’ll beg your hair-ribbons for hat-strings; and when you’re not dancing or playing croquet with him, he’ll be after you with some boy-hobby or other, wanting you to sympathize and help.  ’I know their tricks and their manners.’” But she looked amused and kind while she threatened, and Leslie only smiled back and said nothing.