“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,” said Bell, who was out first.  And then she returned, saying, that she and her sister would obey their uncle’s behest; but that her mother would prefer to remain at home.  “There are the peas to be eaten, you know,” said Lily.

“Send them up to the Great House,” said Bernard.

“Hopkins would not allow it,” said Lily.  “He calls that a mixing of things.  Hopkins doesn’t like mixings.”  And then when the game was over, they sauntered about, out of the small garden into the larger one, and through the shrubberies, and out upon the fields, where they found the still lingering remnants of the haymaking.  And Lily took a rake, and raked for two minutes; and Mr Crosbie, making an attempt to pitch the hay into the cart, had to pay half-a-crown for his footing to the hay-makers; and Bell sat quiet under a tree, mindful of her complexion; whereupon Mr Crosbie, finding the hay-pitching not much to his taste, threw himself under the same tree also, quite after the manner of Apollo, as Lily said to her mother late in the evening.  Then Bernard covered Lily with hay, which was a great feat in the jocose way for him; and Lily in returning the compliment, almost smothered Mr Crosbie,—­by accident.