By accident this wish became known to John; and before the world was a week older, the hitherto unused stables of Tincroft House, and the chamber above, were duly prepared for the reception of a horse fit for a lady's use, a grey pony for John's own bestriding, and a groom to keep them in proper condition. To what extent Tincroft was compelled to draw his purse-strings, and how far he was cheated in the bargain he made, no one probably knew at the time—the honest horse-dealer only excepted.
But dear John, who had never in his life bestridden even a rocking-horse! Well, well, he would have mounted a hippogriff to please Walter Wilson's child, and his Sarah's pet; and it was a sight worth seeing when, by Helen's side, who gracefully reined in her steed to accommodate herself to his more sober pace, John bumped up and down on his saddle till the knobby chairs at High Beech Farm would have been as downy pillows in comparison with it.
And so time wore on.
It has already been intimated that a strong attachment sprung up between Helen Wilson and her school-fellow Catherine Grigson. And this was continued after both young ladies had left school. Their intercourse was kept up, however, principally by writing; for, though Helen was often invited to visit her friend on the banks of the Thames, some unforeseen difficulty always started up to set the invitation aside. I think our friend Tincroft could have given a rational explanation of these unexpected hindrances if he had been disposed to do so, which he was not.
There was nothing, however, to prevent Miss Grigson paying a long-promised visit to Tincroft House one summer; and when there, there was everything to invite its prolongation. Dear Helen was so glad of her friend's company, while Mr. and Mrs. Tincroft were so kind and so hospitably inclined, that it would have been positive cruelty—so Catherine wrote home—to deprive them of the pleasure they coveted.
"And why don't you run down for a day or two?" she wrote to her brother Tom. "'Tis years and years since you were here, you know; and you haven't been out for a holiday all the summer."
"No more have I," said Tom to himself, when he read the note, and the next morning he had deposited himself on the box seat of the Trotbury coach.
"Just come to see how you are getting on in this part of the world," was his first salutation to John, as he landed himself unexpectedly at the gate of Tincroft House, on the afternoon of the same day.
John was very pleased to see the son of his old friend, and he told him so. And as to the inconvenience of accommodating an unexpected guest, quoth Mrs. Tincroft, when young Tom apologised for the abruptness of his invasion, as he called it, she hoped Tincroft House was big enough to accommodate a dozen such as Tom, if need were. And so he might set his mind at rest on that subject.
And Tom did set his mind at rest. In fact, he found his quarters so much to his liking, that he lengthened his visit from day to day, under a variety of pretences, until he had been more than a fortnight an inmate of the pleasant mansion.