CHAPTER II.
THE CROQUET PARTY.
Everybody agreed that the day had been a success. The lawn at The Warren was an ideal croquet-lawn, large, level, and daisyless. It was an old lawn, and was carefully watered. What better place, then, for the local tournament to be fought out upon, than the old lawn at The Warren.
At last the final game has been played. The day had been excessively warm. Everybody was sitting in the shade discussing the claret-cup, the syllabubs, the strawberries and cream, and the home-made confectionery, that were so freely pressed upon the large and rather miscellaneous assemblage which filled the old-fashioned grounds of Diggory Warrender. The owner of this archaic name we have met for an instant in the preceding chapter. He was a hale old country gentleman, a J.P. for his county, and universally liked. Perhaps there was more of the yeoman than the squire about old Mr. Warrender. Though he farmed many acres, yet he did so at a profit, strange to say. But perhaps this is hardly to be wondered at when it is remembered that the acres were his own, and that consequently there was no rent to pay.
Mr. Warrender, who rather scorned claret-cup, was about to discuss the merits of a foaming tankard of home-brewed ale. The ale was good; perhaps it tasted the better to old Warrender as he drank it from the silver tankard of the time of Charles I., which bore the name and arms of his ancestor, Diggory Warrender, armiger, of that epoch.
"Won't you try some, Lord Spunyarn?" old Warrender said; "It has made me the man I am," and certainly this statement was a flaming testimonial to the merits of the Warren ale; for old Warrender, who stood six feet in his socks, seemed to be all muscle, while his white and perfect teeth, he being a man of sixty-five, proved that, at all events as yet, physical decay had not set in, in the master of The Warren.
But Lord Spunyarn shook his head as he signed to the butler to give him what he termed a B. and S.