"Two or three hours, mamma. He rode over from Buttercup where he is staying, for a cricket match, and of course I got him some lunch."
"I should hope so," said the Doctor. "But I didn't think that Carstairs was so fond of the Momson lot as all that."
Mrs. Wortle at once doubted the declared purpose of this visit to Buttercup. Buttercup was more than half-way between Carstairs and Bowick.
"And then we had a game of lawn-tennis. Talbot and Monk came through to make up sides." So much Mary told at once, but she did not tell more till she was alone with her mother.
Young Carstairs had certainly not come over on the sly, as we may call it, but nevertheless there had been a project in his mind, and fortune had favoured him. He was now about nineteen, and had been treated for the last twelve months almost as though he had been a man. It had seemed to him that there was no possible reason why he should not fall in love as well as another. Nothing more sweet, nothing more lovely, nothing more lovable than Mary Wortle had he ever seen. He had almost made up his mind to speak on two or three occasions before he left Bowick; but either his courage or the occasion had failed him. Once, as he was walking home with her from church, he had said one word;—but it had amounted to nothing. She had escaped from him before she was bound to understand what he meant. He did not for a moment suppose that she had understood anything. He was only too much afraid that she regarded him as a mere boy. But when he had been away from Bowick two months he resolved that he would not be regarded as a mere boy any longer. Therefore he took an opportunity of going to Buttercup, which he certainly would not have done for the sake of the Momsons or for the sake of the cricket.
He ate his lunch before he said a word, and then, with but poor grace, submitted to the lawn-tennis with Talbot and Monk. Even to his youthful mind it seemed that Talbot and Monk were brought in on purpose. They were both of them boys he had liked, but he hated them now. However, he played his game, and when that was over, managed to get rid of them, sending them back through the gate to the school-ground.
"I think I must say good-bye now," said Mary, "because there are ever so many things in the house which I have got to do."
"I am going almost immediately," said the young lord.
"Papa will be so sorry not to have seen you." This had been said once or twice before.
"I came over," he said, "on purpose to see you."