Music she knew Bluebell thoroughly understood and excelled in.  She had for years received instruction gratis from the organist at the Cathedral, who, originally attracted by her lovely voice singing in the choir, took her up with enthusiasm, and taught her harmony and thorough bass.  Thus, instead of only practising a desultory accomplishment, she was able to compose and arrange her tuneful ideas correctly.

A dark striking-looking girl interrupted them.  This was Cecil Rolleston, the eldest daughter of the house, or rather she stood in that relation to the Colonel, being the offspring of his first wife.

“Come out and play croquet, Bluebell,” said she; “the children are having a game; they only let me go on condition of bringing you,”—­and she led the way through the window into a charming garden, with large shady maple-trees just beginning to drop their deep-dyed, variegated leaves on the turf; the bluebirds were already gone, but the red and ashen-hued robin, nearly the size of a jay, still rustled through the boughs.

A little white dog, with a ribbon on, was holding a ball within its feathery toes, and playing with it as a cat does a mouse; a gardener was refreshing the thirsty flowers, which had outgrown their strength; and Fleda, Estelle, and Lola, twelve, eleven, and nine, were playing croquet with the zest of recent emancipation from lessons.

The governess, a dark, sallow expositor of the arts and sciences, also wielded a mallet, and Cecil and Bluebell completed the six.

The sides were pretty equally cast, and the combatants were in a most interesting crisis of the game, when Colonel Rolleston entered the garden.

He was a very handsome man, and as is often the case with the only male in a family of women, so studied and given in to by all his female entourage, that he would not have been pleased, whatever their occupations, if he were not immediately rallied round by a little court of flatterers.

“Estelle,” said the governess, “offer your papa your mallet, and ask him to be so kind as to play with us.”  The child’s face lengthened; she had not much hope of his refusing it, but advanced with her request.

“Must I?” said the Colonel.

“Oh, yes!” said the chorus of voices; “be my partner—­be mine.”

“Don’t tear me to pieces among you,” said he, with a deprecating gesture.

“Take Bluebell on your side, papa,” cried Cecil; “she is very good, and we’ll keep Miss Prosody, who is equally so.”

And thus they proceeded, the Colonel radiant with every successful stroke, and blaming mallet, ball, and ground when otherwise, reiterating, “I can’t make a stroke to-day.”

Bluebell was very fond of the Colonel, who liked pretty faces about him, and had been kind to her; but she could not resist a slight feeling of repulsion at what she considered an abject maneuver of Miss Prosody’s.  His ball, by an unskilful miss, was left in her power; her duty to her side required her to crack it to the other end of the ground, but a glance at the irritable gloom of his countenance induced her to discover it to be more to her advantage to attack one rather beyond, and, judiciously missing it left her own blue one an easy stroke for him.