Miss Grace pounced on the pink paper like a hawk, and read out its contents in a voice thrilling with excitement: “You are selected for Kent match, Monday, Tonbridge. Reply paid, Webbe. Hooray! Hooray! Isn’t A. J. just a darling!”
The exuberant young person waved the telegram about in such a frantic manner that she overturned the teapot into the lap of Carteret.
“Terribly sorry, James,” she said breathlessly; “terribly sorry. But lend me a pencil, somebody, and, Jane, just see that that boy don’t go.”
A pencil being promptly forthcoming, Miss Grace wrote in a hasty but firm hand on the slip attached: “Shall be very glad to play, Tonbridge, Monday. T. Trentham.”
“There you are, Jane,” said she; “give that to the boy,” and fishing half-a-crown from her purse, added, “and this is for him, too.”
“Laura, what unwarrantable extravagance,” said the Rector, looking so happy that he could scarcely sit still.
“It ’ud be five shillings,” said Miss Grace, “only I want some new gloves for Tonbridge on Monday. But isn’t it glorious! Isn’t it tremendous of A. J.! Tommy, I’m so delighted! And didn’t I say from the first that they wouldn’t pass you over? And you will take me to Tonbridge, won’t you, Father?”
“I think you are more likely to take me,” said that indulgent man.
The whole-hearted joy of them all was infectious. I might have a dim idea that my own county had yet to behave in a similar way towards one whom I held to be peculiarly worthy, but, none the less, I bore my part in the back thumpings as gallantly as any. The recipient of these congratulations, talkative to the point of calamity the moment before, was now in such a state of miserable happiness that he could not find a word to say. With his eyes fixed modestly on his plate he was white one minute, and red the next. His sister, however determined a foe she might be, was most unmistakably delighted. After inserting a strawberry into Elphinstone’s shirt-collar, not necessarily as a cause of offence, but rather as a guarantee of her excessive happiness, she ended by falling on her father bodily, and publicly hugging him.
“Pater,” she said, “you don’t mind, do you? It is so horribly jolly nice to feel that Tommy’s playing on Monday, isn’t it?”