The croquet practice still survived. In truth, Fanny was afraid to ride
lest Lord Keith should join her, and was glad to surround herself with
companions. She could not see the enemy without a nervous trepidation,
and was eager to engross herself with anybody or thing that came to hand
so as to avoid the necessity of attending to him. More than once did she
linger among her boys "to speak to Mr. Touchett," that she might avoid
a ten minutes' walk with his lordship; and for nothing was she more
grateful than for the quiet and ever ready tact with which Bessie Keith
threw herself into the breach. That bright damsel was claimed by Lord
Keith as a kinswoman, and, accepting the relationship, treated him with
the pretty playfulness and coquetry that elderly men enjoy from lively
young girls, and thus often effected a diversion in her friend's favour,
to the admiration both of the Colonel and of Lady Temple herself; all,
however, by intuition, for not a word had been hinted to her of what
had passed during that game at croquet. She certainly was a most winning
creature; the Colonel was charmed with her conversation in its shades
between archness and good sense, and there was no one who did not look
forward with dread to the end of her visit, when after a short stay with
one of her married cousins, she must begin her residence with the blind
uncle to whose establishment she, in her humility, declared she should
be such a nuisance. It was the stranger that she should think so, as she
had evidently served her apprenticeship to parish work at Bishopsworthy;
she knew exactly how to talk to poor people, and was not only at home in
clerical details herself, but infused them into Lady Temple; so that, to
the extreme satisfaction of Mr. Touchett, the latter organized a treat
for the school-children, offered prizes for needlework, and once
or twice even came to listen to the singing practice when anything
memorable was going forward. She was much pleased at being helped to do
what she felt to be right and kind, though hitherto she had hardly known
how to set about it, and had been puzzled and perplexed by Rachel's
disapproval, and semi-contempt of "scratching the surface" by the
commonplace Sunday-school system.