“Bravo!” cried Rose. “How I like to hear you talk like that, Mr. Parsley. I didn’t think you had so much sense. You and I will have a game together—single wicket. We must play for something—what shall it be?”
“Oh—for nothing,” the curate vacuously remarked.
“That’s for love, you rogue!” exclaimed the Squire. “Come, come, none o’ that, sir—ha! ha!”
“Oh, very well; we’ll play for love,” said Rose.
“And I’ll hold the stakes, my dear—eh?”
“You dear old naughty Squire!—what do you mean?”
Rose laughed. But she had all the men surrounding her, and Mrs. Shorne talked of departing.
Why did not Evan bravely march away? Why, he asked himself, had he come on this cricket-field to be made thus miserable? What right had such as he to look on Rose? Consider, however, the young man’s excuses. He could not possibly imagine that a damsel who rode one day to a match, would return on the following day to see it finished: or absolutely know that unseen damsel to be Rose Jocelyn. And if he waited, it was only to hear her sweet voice once again, and go for ever. As far as he could fathom his hopes, they were that Rose would not see him: but the hopes of youth are deep.
Just then a toddling small rustic stopped in front of Evan, and set up a howl for his “fayther.” Evan lifted him high to look over people’s heads, and discover his wandering parent. The urchin, when he had settled to his novel position, surveyed the field, and shouting, “Fayther, fayther! here I bes on top of a gentleman!” made lusty signs, which attracted not his father alone. Rose sang out, “Who can lend me a penny?” Instantly the curate and the squire had a race in their pockets. The curate was first, but Rose favoured the squire, took his money with a nod and a smile, and rode at the little lad, to whom she was saying: “Here, bonny boy, this will buy you—”
She stopped and coloured.