"Cricket?" cried Jack joyfully.
"Capital! it's ever so long since I played a game of cricket."
Betty, as fresh as the morning in her trim white gown, came out to join the party in the garden, and Jack hastened to introduce her to his new friend.
"Here's Aunt Betty; she'll play too, if you ask her. She's a splendid field, and will catch you out first ball unless you're careful."
Betty and Uncle Tom laughed as they shook hands.
"I've already made friends with your nephew, Miss Treherne, and was coming to call on the rest of you this afternoon, when the children beguiled me by the way. Will you really honour us by joining in our game, though I ask it in fear and trembling after hearing of your prowess?"
"Jack gives me the credit for doing everything better than anyone else, a reputation I find it impossible to sustain, but I love to play."
A very spirited game followed, which ended finally in Betty's catching out the parson, to Jack's unspeakable triumph.
"And after your warning, too," he said, throwing down the bat in comic despair. "And now I must pay my call, and then Eva and I must trot home. My sister said she would be back at six o'clock, and we must be there to meet her."
"I'm so glad you've come; it will be so lovely for Mrs. Kenyon to have one of her own relations with her. I think she has been very lonely."