"You must stay with us over next week now," said Sarah, one evening when Tom was seriously propounding the propriety of returning to business. "It is Trotbury cricket week, and we shall want a gentleman to take us on to the ground two or three of the days at least; and John doesn't like cricket at all—do you, John?"
John didn't like cricket, and he said so. He had had enough of cricket in his younger days, and what pleasure there could be in standing up before three sticks stuck into the ground to knock away a ball, with the chance of being maimed for life, he couldn't for a moment conceive. But for all that, if his dear Sarah had any pleasure in seeing what was called "the noble game" played, or if he could be of any use to the young ladies in procuring them good positions for viewing "the noble game," he was very much at their service.
So, if Tom must really return, or felt called upon by the imperative claims of business to return to London, he himself would not interpose an obstacle in the shape of Trotbury cricket week. Indeed, he wasn't quite sure that it wouldn't be as well for Tom to remember that there were claims upon him elsewhere. What, for instance, would the young lady at Camberwell think when she heard, if she should hear, of Tom's being seen on Trotbury cricket ground with another young lady? John asked, gravely.
Whereupon, Tom declared that the young lady at Camberwell might think as she pleased. He hoped he wasn't tied to any young lady's apron strings; there would be time enough for that when another knot was tied. Tom shifted rather uneasily in his chair as he said this, and, though he did feign to laugh, he looked a little redder than usual, especially when he saw that his host's gravity was not at, all moved by his gaiety.
Perhaps it was to prove how much at liberty he felt himself, that, later in the day, Tom left his host and hostess and his sister in the drawing-room, and strolled into the pretty flower garden already described, where Helen was employing herself—as he very well knew—in tending her plants. By the way, there is no feminine occupation more adapted to innocent flirtation (if such a composite term, or rather, contradiction in terms, may be used) than in this kind of gardening. The sweet, enthralling tyranny displayed by the head-gardeneress in ordering her enchanted slave, who for the nonce is made to be a hewer of wood (with his pocket-knife in preparing flower-sticks) and a drawer of water (in filling the watering-pot any number of times from the nearest pump, well, or pond), is something quite instructive to witness (for it points back to Eden, evidently), and delightful to endure.
Tom at least thought so, as he found himself (his offered services accepted), making himself of some use, as she said, to the fair Helen. For by this time a kind of understanding seemed to have been tacitly entered into that Master Tom, being already on the high road to matrimony, and within sight, so to speak, of the goal, was to consider Miss Wilson as a sort of twin-sister to his own sister Catherine, and to be treated with frank unreserve accordingly, for:
"What was Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"
I am afraid, too, that dear old John Tincroft had by this time, if the truth were known, rather spoiled darling Helen, by making her see and believe how happy it made him to be her humble servant; and perhaps she might have thought that every gentleman she fell in with was like John. But this by the way.
"There, that will do for all the watering we want to-night," said the lady, looking round with admiration on her revived flowers. "And now please help me tie up this straggler, Tom."
In another moment TOM was on one knee, for the convenience of the operation, and the young lady's slender fingers were deftly fastening the string which was to confine the flower-stalks to their supporting stick, when a hand, not Helen's, was laid on Tom's shoulder.