University of Virginia Library

MR. COLLINS'S CROQUET SET.

CROQUET, that eminently fascinating game, was introduced on the premises of the Collinses Friday. In the afternoon, Podge's boy brought up the set; and, just before tea, Mrs. Collins arranged the wickets. Collins had learned to play when visiting in Glovershire last summer, and Mrs. Collins acquired an indifferent knowledge of the game from two elderly maiden sisters on Paxton Street; and so, on that delicious Friday afternoon, they took out the mallets and balls, and commenced the game.

"Now, Emmeline," playfully observed Mr. Collins, "don't you begin cheating at the start. If you do, the game will be prostituted to mere gambling, an' we'll injure our moral natures in trying to build up our physical."

"People who are so ready to charge against others need close watching themselves, young man," said she in the same spirit; "and I mean to keep a sharp eye on you."

Then they both laughed.

"But it will be a good thing for you, Emmeline," he said, with a tinge of tenderness in his voice.

"You are kept cooped up in the house so, that you hardly get a breath of fresh air. This will give you exercise, and keep you out doors too."

"You are always thinking of me," said she as her eyes grew moist. "You need the out-door air as much as I do; but you are too unselfish to think of yourself."

And, thus exchanging sentiments which did credit to both their hearts, the game progressed.

After passing through the centre wicket, Mr. Collins used her ball to help himself through the other wickets to the upper stake. Then he left her near the first wicket, and struck for the stake, which, being about eight inches distant, made him over-confident. The ball missed by about an eighth of an inch.

"I declare!" he exclaimed in vexation.

Then she, having watched his rapid progress with a clouded face, now struck for him, and hit him; and a minute later his ball was spinning through the grass to the other end of the ground. She was now in position for her wicket, and passed through it and the others to the stake, but missed it. Then he came up by a well-directed blow to within two inches of the stake. But she went for him again; and, when she got through, she was three wickets beyond the stake, and his ball was at the other end of the ground again, and his brow was finely corrugated. He stepped nervously

toward it. It was quite evident that he was not unruffled. When his turn came again, he drove back to the stake, but struck a wicket, and rebounded so close to her, that she easily hit him, and again introduced him through wickets he was not for, and then sent him flying again. Her success caused her to laugh, and he heard it.

"You think you are pretty smart; but I'll get even with you," he said, without smiling.

"You'll have to play better than you have done," she pertinently suggested.

"I think I know as much about croquet as you do," he said, still with a straight face.

"You don't play as if you did," she retorted.

"If you'd had any fairness about you, you'd let me had that stroke over when I was up to the stake. You knew I slipped, as well as I did," he said, growing red in the face.

"No, I didn't know any thing about it," she replied, taking on a little color.

"I say you did."

"And I say I didn't. But, if you are going to play this game, why don't you go ahead?"

"I'll play when I get ready," he answered, turning white about the mouth.

"If you ain't going to play, you'd better go into the house and shut up," she suggested, raising her voice.

"Don't you talk to me in that way," he cried, "or I'll make you sorry for it, you brazen-faced hussy!"

"Hussy, hussy!" she screamed. "Ain't you ashamed of yourself, John Jacob Collins, to call your wife a hussy? Hussy, am I? you old villain! Hussy is it? you miserable brute! I'm to be called a hussy, am I, after working my knuckles off for you, and slaving for thirty years after your crooked carcass? There!" she cried in a paroxysm, throwing the mallet on the ground, "take your old croquet, and shove it down your lying throat, and choke yourself to death with it, if you want to, you miserable old wretch! And don't you never ask me to play with you again, or I'll tell you something you'll remember the longest day you live, you old devil!"

And then she bounced into the house, leaving him standing out there, and rubbing his head in a benumbed sort of way. But, almost immediately after, she thrust her head out of the window, and snapped out, "You needn't think you are going to get any hot biscuit for your tea in this house this night, young man; and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it just as soon as you are a mind to."