Below the terrace spreads a large square of grass, uninvaded by flower-bed or shrub, mowed and rolled, rolled and mowed, into the similitude of a pancake for flatness. There croquet-hoops glance whitely in the soft half-light; mallets lie strewn like dead soldiers after a battle; balls red, blue, and yellow, like great ripe fruit tumbled among the grass. "Is this your croquet-ground?" "Yes." "Nice and level?" "Yes." "Like a billiard table, only a prettier green?" "Yes; would you like a game?" "Better than doing nothing, isn't it?" answers Esther, cheerily; she being a young woman to whom the words _rest_ and _enjoyment_ are not synonymous, as they mostly grow to be to people in later years. From the dining-room comes the faint melody of the trombone, played with the skill of much practice by Sir Thomas's nose. Some one comes to the window, looks out, puts a hand on the sill, and jumps down. St. John apparently has an aversion from going out and coming in by the authorised modes of exit and entrance. Now that one can see him without any bigonia interposing, one notices that he has kind, eager eyes--eyes that seem to be looking, looking for something that they have not found yet--and rather a long nose, that the sun has got hold of and browned, as a cook browns mashed potatoes. "Won't you join us, St. John?" asks Miss Blessington, stooping to reinstate a fallen hoop, and looking calm invitation at him out of her great, fine, passionless, cow eyes. St. John hesitates, and looks towards Esther to see whether she is not going to second the invitation; but she is balancing herself with her two feet on a croquet-mallet, and does not appear to see him. "Gooseberry I may be," she thinks, "but, at all events, I won't be instrumental in making myself so." "Do I ever play?" asks he, with petulance, walking off in a huff. "He did not accept your invitation with the exultant gratitude one would have expected, did he?" says Miss Craven, maliciously. "He hates the game," replies Miss Blessington, rather sharplier than is her wont--"particularly playing with odd numbers." "Oh!" The match begins; it is about as fair as a foot race between Deerfoot and a lame baby. Esther has played about six times in the course of her life; Miss Blessington about six thousand. Miss Blessington makes the round of the hoops in triumphant solitude, while poor Essie struggles feebly, ignorantly, unscientifically, to ring a bell that refuses to emit the faintest tinkle. "Hare and tortoise!" cries she, laughing at her own discomfiture; "you'll go to sleep presently, and I shall crawl in and win." "Since you wish me, I don't mind taking a mallet," says St. John, appearing suddenly round a big Wellingtonia, and looking confusedly conscious of being seen descending very awkwardly from his high horse.