And you wanted a chat with me, did you? Oh, Mrs. Sarah Tincroft, Mrs. Sarah!
And all this time, who cared for who was at the wicket, or how many runs had been made by the South, or how many by the North? Not Helen, or Tom either. At length, however, there was a great clapping of hands and much hurrahing (or hooraying), for the second innings was over, and the South had beaten the North.
Young Tom went back from Tincroft House in a not very unhappy frame of mind, I think. True, there had been nothing said about love "and all that trumpery," as I heard it called once. Trumpery, indeed! Well, nothing had been said about it, whatever you choose to call it. Tom wasn't going to be precipitate; and his disappointment was too recent; and besides, never having, from his cradle upwards, been a free man, he wanted a little time for trying what freedom was like. More than all, he must know something more about Helen; and she ought to know more about him; and a great deal more to the same purpose was conned over between Tom and his sister before his return.
Nevertheless, Catherine knew, as well as you and I do, reader, what was coming. And so did dear Sarah know it; and I am very much mistaken if John did not give a guess at it without being told. At any rate, he witnessed more than one little episode in the flower garden with which he did not feel himself called upon to interfere.
And in due time it all came to pass; so that the following summer—before the return match of North versus South was played in the Trotbury week, the veracious weekly chronicle informed its readers that at the parish church in the village of —, near Trotbury, were united in the bonds of matrimony Thomas Grigson, junior, of London, to Helen, daughter of the late Walter Wilson, of Boomerang, in Australia. And then in another part of the paper appeared a long description of the wedding, announcing, among other particulars, that Mr. John Tincroft, of Tincroft House, gave away the bride, whose beauty was the theme of admiration to all beholders. Also that two equally elegant and lovely sisters of the bridegroom officiated as bridesmaids; and that the ceremony over, and the wedding breakfast concluded, the happy pair drove off to catch the mail packet, which was to convey them to the Continent, on their wedding tour.
The End
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.