"Why not?" he enquired.

"Because...." She blushed deeply, rosy-red.

"Because what?"

"Because...." She looked down for just a moment, then raised her head with an adorable air of dignity most becoming, "you mustn't kiss me any more until after we're married. Aunt 'Liza always says a girl mustn't!"

"Married!" The thoroughly startled Mr. Bennet sank backward on the pink sofa. "Why...."

"Yes," repeated Arethusa. Then something in his expression suddenly frightened her; her face went chalk white. "Why.... Why did you.... Didn't you...."

"I think you've misunderstood me," began Mr. Bennet, gently, "I didn't mean...." Then he stopped awkwardly. For once in his life the Wonderful Mr. Bennet was at an utter loss for the words with which to continue a conversation with a lady.

"You ki ... kissed me," said Arethusa.

But Mr. Bennet made no reply. It was a Fact which it was unnecessary to confirm, and could not be denied.

"And di ... didn't you ... you mean," she continued slowly, "that you wanted to marry me?" She brought each word of this question out with difficulty. "I thought me ... men never kissed girls that way unless they wanted to marry them?" This last was also an interrogation.

"No," replied Mr. Bennet, uncomfortably, "not necessarily."

She began backing away from him, her eyes fixed upon him, wide with a sort of horror.

"My dear child...."

"I'm not your dear child!" Arethusa was suddenly so angry that she trembled with rage from head to foot. "Don't come anywhere near me," she exploded, as Mr. Bennet started towards her.

She stuck her hands straight out in front of her as if to push him away, and Mr. Bennet stopped short where he was.

"If you'll let me explain," he said, "I think I can. I didn't.... That is, I'm just as sorry as I can be. And I really didn't mean a single thing!" But this was a very wrong beginning.

It made matters, already bad enough, very much worse. He had Kissed her and he had Not Meant a Single Thing! There was Deep Disgrace for Arethusa in this simple declaration.

Now Arethusa's rearing by Miss Eliza had been according to a few very simple Rules for Conduct, which were nevertheless as ironbound and unalterable as the most complicated laws that were ever framed. And one of those Rules was that no really Nice girl would ever permit herself to be kissed by a man unless she had every intention of marrying him immediately or was already married to him. Miss Eliza had often said that she would far rather see Arethusa dead and cold in her coffin than to see her the sort of girl who thought so little of herself as to kiss a man she was not to marry. This was really at the bottom of Arethusa's expressed objection to being kissed by Timothy on those occasions when such unexpected conduct of his had so displeased her. She had no intention of ever marrying Timothy, whatever his own intentions might have been; therefore, it seemed to Arethusa, according to this Miss Elizian Guide for the Proper Behavior of Nice Young Ladies, it was wrong for him to salute her in any such fashion, or for her to permit him to. It is true that she had kissed Timothy herself under the stress of such excitement as arrivals and departures, but such salutations were really in a class quite apart, and of their own.

Into the Kiss she had given Mr. Bennet, Arethusa had put her construction of the meaning of his unexpected action founded upon these ideas of kisses, and her sentiments in regard to him, and all the thoughts and dreams about him in which she had linked their two selves together: only to find that Mr. Bennet himself had no such ideas of kisses, and had evidently had no such thoughts and dreams. Is there any one to wonder at her sudden feeling of humiliation? She rubbed fiercely at her lips with the back of one hand, as if to remove the visible and outward sign of her feeling of Disgrace. Then the color surged back into her face; and once more, hot Rage mounted high, flashing its signal from her stormy eyes and quick breathing.

"I hate you!" she exclaimed, suddenly, "Oh ... I hate you!"

"Please listen to me just a moment, Arethusa. I...."

"Don't say anything to me!" She stamped one foot with angry emphasis. "I won't listen! I don't want to hear anything you have to say! And Timothy was exactly right about you! Oh...!"

She flung herself face downward on the rose-colored sofa and began to sob violently, her shoulders quivering; burying her head farther and farther back into the corner of the sofa until it seemed more like a piled up heap of party finery huddled there than an actual girl.

This was truly Dreadful!

Mr. Bennet stood, man-fashion, helplessly above her, with an overpowering desire to flee far from those tears; and yet with a strong conviction, at the same time, that he ought to stay and at least attempt a justification of what had been so sadly misconstrued, if there was any earthly way in which it could be justified. He was willing to say, or to do, anything which she might demand of him, to straighten it out. The sobs decreased in intensity and so Mr. Bennet spoke.

"Arethusa...." he began.

Then Arethusa's sobs stopped altogether as abruptly almost as they had begun, and she rose majestically from the sofa, keeping her tear-stained face averted.

"I asked you not to speak to me. And I'm going home," not once did she look, even in his direction. "By myself," she added, positively.

"I can't let you do a thing like that...."

"It has nothing whatever to do with what you can't let, and I shall scream out loud right here, if you start to try to follow me!"

"Will you let me apologize then, at least, before you go? If you insist on going?"

"No, you can't apologize. I don't want a single one of your apologies."

Mr. Bennet felt as weak as the proverbial water in the face of such personified determination as was Arethusa. He meekly permitted her to leave the little recess of palms and to fly across the ball room floor while he stood as one hypnotized without moving. When he had recovered his powers of locomotion sufficiently to follow, she was just coming out of the dressing room door wrapped in her green cloak. The sight of the green cloak almost unnerved him again. He had not dreamed that the child would carry out her wild plan of going home. He had thought that she might retire to the dressing-room for awhile, but that she would surely recover before many moments were flown. He took one or two half-hearted steps forward. The Wonderful Mr. Bennet had no precedent established for his guidance in this predicament. He was all at sea; no such situation had ever befallen him before. Arethusa was the only lady he had ever taken to a Party who had gone home without him. Would decided pursuit be too undignified; or could he risk a Scene?

Arethusa caught a glimpse of him in his uncertain regard of her, as he stood near the ball-room entrance, and off she flew like the wind in the direction she judged the stairs to be, luckily finding them right there; for she could not risk the waiting for the elevator to come up and get her. He should not be given the slightest opportunity to speak to her again!

She plunged madly down one long flight of wide steps, broken by several landings, to find herself in the wide old lobby, where the startled night clerk was aroused from his dozing, for this ancient inn was far from lively at this hour of the night especially in this part of it, by her sudden entrance; and he went to hunt for Clay at her breathless request. Very fortunately, for Arethusa's impulsive departing, he had not driven off anywhere, but was easily located by the obliging clerk among a small group of chauffeurs who were lounging in the barber shop; while Arethusa waited impatiently in the lobby, casting fearful glances in the direction of first the stairs and then the elevator, fully expectant of seeing Mr. Bennet appear from either direction. Clay was slightly mystified at this sudden summons, so early in the evening, but like a good chauffeur and the friend of Arethusa's which he so truly was, he asked no questions; and unfastened the back door for her, having driven in the back way without a word of comment. Arethusa knew that Ross and Elinor would still be up at this early hour, within hearing of the opening of the front door, and she wanted to slip into the house without their knowledge. She was quite sure that their interrogations would fall fast and furious; a natural curiosity which would have to be gratified as to the Reason for this unexpectedly early return from the Real Event of the Season.

It was a Silent and Miserable Maiden who thus went home so prematurely from what was to have been the most Marvelous Affair ever attended, huddled back into one corner of the limousine; and it was a still more Silent and Miserable Maiden who crept softly up the back stairs and sought her room, where she undressed entirely in the dark and climbed immediately into bed.

And the grey hours of the dawning found her still wakeful under the same green silk coverlid beneath which she had slept so many, many nights with Happy Dreaming of the Wonderful Mr. Bennet and his very great Charm.



CHAPTER XXIII

This was the very first night in all of her healthy young life that Arethusa did not go to sleep just as soon as her head had touched the pillow.

Over and over again her active imagination re-lived for her that scene with Mr. Bennet, and her whole body seemed to burn with the Disgrace of his Kiss. She writhed and twisted and turned in her bed, but she could not get away from the Shame of it, anywhere; and the way Mr. Bennet had looked when he had said she had misunderstood him.

Miss Eliza's convictions upon all subjects were most decided, but on no single subject were they more decided than on this very one of a Kiss. No Decent Woman, said Miss Eliza with a terrible emphasis, would allow a man's lips to Touch hers, or permit him to embrace her, unless there were Matrimonial Intentions.

But poor Arethusa's Intentions had all been Matrimonial, however Mr. Bennet's, for with all her heart she had given of her very best. Her shy building of air castles for the Perfect Bliss of Two, through all these golden weeks just past, superinduced, one might say, by Mr. Bennet's attitude of unmistakable delight in her companionship, had led to this catastrophe of a misunderstanding.

And as the hours wore on the feeling of humiliation at having so misunderstood with her thought that he had wanted to marry her when he had Kissed her, grew and grew until it was almost unbearable.

Then, quite suddenly, she sat bolt upright in bed. For an Idea concerning Mr. Bennet, no longer prefixed the Wonderful, had wormed itself into her brain without her having the slightest conception how it had got there, and now it presented itself to her, fully formed.

Mr. Bennet was very decidedly one of the very sort of men Miss Eliza had been so careful to warn her against!

He was one of those Awful Male Beings who were nice to girls to win their affections, only to deceive them!

No one in the world could have been nicer to any girl than Mr. Bennet had been to her! And he had most certainly won her Affections! And she had most certainly been completely deceived! His had been the Kiss of a Judas! So Arethusa would undoubtedly have named it had she known any of the classification of Kisses. But one thing about the Whole Affair loomed Large and Certain; she had gone contrary to Miss Eliza's Expressed Wishes once more! And this time, it was with what Dire Results!

This made it twice that she had lapsed from the path pointed out for her treading in her intercourse with the members of the other sex; the man on the train, and now ... Mr. Bennet! The man of the train appeared before Arethusa at the moment. She had thought him such a nice man, until superior wisdom had informed her differently. Yet that affair had ended comparatively smoothly, thanks to Mrs. Cherry. There was no punishment Miss Eliza could fairly inflict for that, beyond scolding a little. But this! What would Miss Eliza ever do if she found this out? And Arethusa had thought Mr. Bennet a Nice man also. Nay, more than merely nice; he had seemed Perfect. It was quite plain to Arethusa that she knew nothing whatever about men. The best thing for her to do hereafter would be walk in directions where they were not to be found.

Arethusa decided, going back to the very beginning for about the hundredth time, and reviewing this Affair in this new light of Miss Eliza's regard of it, that her lips had best be locked so closely together in regard to her Fall from Grace that Inquisitional Torture would not be strong enough to force it from her.

No, whatever happened hereafter under her eagle eye that so little escaped, to cause the pouring forth of the vials of her wrath upon Arethusa's head, Miss Eliza must never, never know of the Bennet Escapade. And further considering It, from the other angle of her deep humiliation of having misunderstood, she also decided that no human being should ever learn, from her own lips, of the Great Shame that had befallen the daughter of the House of Worthington this Fatal Evening of the January Cotillion.

The first wan light of dawn struggling through her half drawn blinds found Arethusa thus, still wakeful, and still miserably thoughtful; but a little while after she had heard the first milkman's cart rattle past in the street, she fell into a troubled slumber of vague, unpleasant dreams that made her toss and mutter in her sleep. They were Dreams of Miss Eliza's fury in a personified form, and of Mr. Bennet, cloven-hoofed, with horns upon his handsome head and grinning as diabolically as any fiend (that half-sad, half-sweet smile of his she had so loved distorted thus!) both of which phantoms pursued her wheresoever she fled in her dreaming to escape them, even to the uttermost parts of the earth; sometimes they were together in pursuit, and sometimes they pursued singly. But they gave her no chance to get away from either of them.

She slept straight on through the breakfast hour, for they rarely disturbed her when she had been to a party the night before, and did not waken until nearly noon. Then for a long while she lay there conscious that something Terrible had happened to her, but not wholly conscious, through the heaviness of her waking, just what it was. But it dawned upon her fully in time, and she turned and buried her face in her pillow with a little miserable cry.

It was the greyest sort of day, a real January day, with leaden clouds that hung low to the earth. Snow clouds, they would have called them at the Farm. When Arethusa looked out of the window, she was glad that the sun was not shining: for what a mockery of Absolute Unhappiness a sunshiny day would have seemed!

She dragged herself out of bed, and dressed herself slowly; it was as if she were trying to postpone her inevitable appearance in public as long as possible. When she had finished she stood and stared intently at herself in the mirror. In such reality were the shame and humiliation of the night just past still with her, that she could not be sure that the roundness of that Kiss did not show plainly on her lips for the observation of all beholders. But even her closest scrutiny could not detect anything actually visibly different about her mouth, though her eyes had unaccustomed deep shadows painted darkly under them, and her face looked queerly white and drawn.

Arethusa drew herself to her fullest height and shook her shoulders decidedly once or twice; Ross and Elinor must not know about This. They must not even be permitted to suspect that anything was wrong.

They were just starting luncheon when she went downstairs.

Elinor glanced at Arethusa who came slowly into the little breakfast room, where they always lunched, to greet her gayly.

"Did you have a good...." she began with eagerness, but she stopped when she noticed those dark circles under the grey eyes, and her own eyes widened in alarm, "Why, Arethusa, dearest, what on earth has happened?"

And Arethusa, completely unnerved by the kindness of the anxious tone, flew across the room and flopped down on the floor by Elinor's chair, to bury her head in Elinor's lap and weep uncontrollably.

Over her bent red head, Ross and Elinor exchanged a few eyebrow telegrams which could be translated easily as, "Gridley Bennet."

No one spoke to the sorrowing Arethusa though, and her mother stroked her hair softly to help her somewhat toward a recovery. But after awhile muffled words became distinguishable through the sobs.

"I want to go home! Oh, I want to go home! Mayn't I go home?"

"Do you mean back to the Farm, dear?" asked Elinor, with a nod in Ross's direction which meant that she was quite sure that Mr. Bennet was at the bottom of all this suffering.

Arethusa's own nod of affirmation to the question was so violent that it shook out several hairpins.

"Well, we'll see about it. Suppose you eat some lunch now, and you'll feel much better. Then we can talk it over."

"I don't want any lunch!" Arethusa raised her head and looked tragically up into the kind face which was bending over her, "I want to go home now, today. I want," and a deep sob shook her voice again, "I want Aunt 'Senath!"

"But you can't possibly go to-day, Arethusa," it was Ross who spoke this time. "There are no more trains that you could take to-day, except one that gets you home at midnight; none until to-morrow morning. Will," smiling slightly, "will to-morrow morning be soon enough to leave us? Do you think you can continue to put up with us for that little bit of a while longer?"

But his daughter made no sort of response to this attempt at levity; her face was soberness itself.

"Couldn't you tell me what is troubling you, dear?" Elinor's sweet voice was all sympathy. "Could I help you in any way? You know I'd gladly do all I can. And perhaps, if you tell me...."

Then the grey eyes filled with tears once more, some of which brimmed clear over; but Arethusa shook her head to that kind offer to share the burden of her woe. She could not tell Elinor about it. It would be absolutely impossible.

She could not tell anyone about it.

She would not be able to tell even Miss Asenath whom she wanted so intensely. But since she was the very tiniest scrap she had snuggled close up to Miss Asenath on her couch when troubles came. And she wanted (oh, how terribly she wanted it!) to snuggle up on that couch right now; and it was so very far away! Miss Asenath had somehow always understood things which were hard to put in words, without Arethusa having to make any effort to put them in words. And in her present miserable state, she felt that Miss Asenath, with her gentle understanding, was the only person in the whole world who would be able to make her feel less miserable without having to be told what had specifically caused the misery. No matter how much Miss Eliza had ever punished her for misdeeds in the past, no matter how bad she might have been, Miss Asenath had always loved and wanted Arethusa to come and snuggle up to her that the sorrow might be comforted into nothing. No childish disgrace of former years had ever been black enough to change her feeling for the culprit.

Arethusa clung to the thought of Miss Asenath.

But lacking her right at this moment, she continued to sit on the floor at Elinor's feet, and Elinor's kind hand lovingly patted her back into a certain semblance of composure. George stood disapprovingly over by the pantry door. There were times for everything, considered George, and any mealtime was the time to be eating. An excellent lunch was getting cold while Miss Arethusa sat on the floor; good food was being wasted.

"Miss Arethusa's soup will be quite cold," he suggested, after a few moments. George was an old family servant, and he had Certain Privileges. "Shall I bring another plate?"

"So it is!" exclaimed Elinor. "Yes, suppose you do, George. And, Arethusa dear, you must really eat your lunch. Or breakfast, if you'd rather call it what it is for you. I think it will make you feel much better."

But Arethusa was all unresponsive to Elinor's tiny bit of friendly levity also; her face was still sober. Yet she obediently got up from the floor and seated herself at the table to eat the steaming plate of soup which George immediately brought. And it went down her throat much easier than she had imagined any sort of food would go; her throat had seemed so contracted and full of painful lumps. As she ate, her healthy young appetite began to assert itself, and she finished all of her soup and made a very good meal besides. Some of the color came back into her white face.

After lunch, Ross took her into the library with him. He could not bear to see her so strange and quiet and he hated that curious look of misery so foreign to her young eyes.

"Suppose you tell me about it, daughter, couldn't you?" he asked, when he had settled her comfortably in a big chair in front of the fire and seated himself on the arm of it with one of his arms protectingly across the back.

Arethusa wept stormily again.

But she could not possibly tell him about it.

For he was certain to be terribly angry with her, and no telling what he might do to Mr. Bennet. Fathers surely had some way of punishing men for Disgraced Daughters. It was not that any lingering affection for Mr. Bennet made her thus anxious to shield him from any consequences which might be legitimately his for the way he had acted; but everyone might hear of it then, and incidentally.... It might reach Miss Eliza.

Ross could not help smiling as he looked down at his daughter, sitting there with the warm firelight playing over her. She looked so young, so altogether young, with her slimness and her tumbled hair, and her childishly quivering red mouth, for all that great unhappiness in her eyes. And even if she would not tell him the exact nature of her trouble, Ross was almost positive that he knew what it was. He was well acquainted with Mr. Bennet, and with Arethusa and Arethusa's worship of Mr. Bennet, and he had had for some time a rather shrewd idea that Mr. Bennet really thought a great deal of Arethusa. He knew also what sometimes happened at dances, especially in rose bowers as romantic as those that were always a feature of the January Cotillion; Ross had been to dances himself, in his day, where there had been the equivalent of Romantic Rose Bowers, in moons and balconies. It was all the same. He also knew very well just what Miss Eliza's ideas were about such things, he knew that most of this unhappiness over what had happened was really due to Miss Eliza's rearing; yet Ross was not going to say a word which would disclose all of this varied knowledge of his.

Further knowledge he was positive he possessed was that Arethusa would recover before very long. If she really insisted on going back to the Farm, Timothy was there to help in the recovery. He would undoubtedly be of assistance along this line. This last thought almost made Ross laugh aloud.

But Ross was not so aware as he imagined he was of just the way his daughter felt. For it did not occur to him, for an instant, that Arethusa's whole idea of the Wonderful Mr. Bennet had changed; that now she saw him, instead of as the one Perfect Human Being in a very faulty world, as a Ravening Wolf ranging within the supposedly Safe Folds of Society seeking whom he might Devour, all unknown to the parents of his Innocent Victims; that she felt so deeply humiliated at having misunderstood Mr. Bennet's Intentions, and at having misconstrued them to be as Matrimonial as her own; and so deeply disgraced at being Kissed by him, such a Man as he had proved himself to be; and so completely terror-stricken at the Bare Idea of Miss Eliza finding out the very least bit of all this: that Arethusa could almost have been torn limb from limb to have kept such knowledge from her aunt.

No, Ross's understanding did not extend itself to any of this.

But he sat in front of the wood fire with her, in the same big chair with his arm around her, silently, as seemed to suit her mood; and every now and then he patted her a little on the shoulder, as lovingly as Elinor had patted her, to let her know that she was to feel sure of his sympathy, even if she could not bring herself to confide in him, and that he was still right there, and at her service, whenever she should want him. Arethusa loved to have him with her; it was delightful, just the two of them together so cozily; but every one of his soft fatherly pats brought her near to tears as she felt it, for she knew herself so very unworthy to receive it.

George appeared in the library about half-past three, bearing under one arm an enormous flower box and in the other hand a card-tray with one small white slip of cardboard upon it.

"Mr. Bennet to see Miss Arethusa," he announced.

Arethusa sprang up, almost overturning Ross.

"Who did you say, George?"

"Mr. Bennet." He extended the card-tray, and then the flower box.

"I won't see Mr. Bennet!" exclaimed Arethusa, all over pride at once, and drawing herself up.

"Very well, Miss Arethusa."

George turned to go, but Ross stopped him.

"Wait just a moment, George. Are you quite sure, daughter, that you hadn't better see him?"

Arethusa's eyes flashed.

"I won't see him, Father! I ... I...." she fairly choked over the words, her utterance was so intense, "I hate him! I never want to see him again as long as I live!"

George looked inquiringly at Mr. Worthington; this was no message for him to be carrying to the gentleman in the reception room.

"Tell Mr. Bennet, George," said Ross, in answer to the look, for he knew that the butler wished the conventions observed on every occasion, and he was half smiling as he said it, "Tell Mr. Bennet that Miss Arethusa wishes to be excused."

George bowed,—this was much better—and disappeared.

Arethusa waited, standing poised with a queer little expression of strained attention, until she heard the front door close; then she sighed, a soft sigh unmistakably of relief.

Mr. Bennet turned away from the Worthington House uncertainly. He was half of a mind to go right straight back and try to see Arethusa once more. He was very sorry about last night. He was remorsefully sorry, when the day had fully come. He would not have thought that Arethusa would be inclined to view such an episode as she so very evidently had. And yet, on further intensive consideration, he realized that if he had stopped beforehand to give any real thought to it, at all, he might have known that she would take it in just the way she had.

There was nothing really horrid about Mr. Bennet. It is to be doubted if he had ever had a really horrid thought in all his life; but he could not help looking like a man in a collar advertisement and he was born with his manner. He was not himself to blame if young and impressionable things feminine insisted upon falling in love with him. Who could blame him for accepting such admiration and attempting, at times, what might be considered as a slight return? Most of us like to be admired. Mr. Bennet's biggest fault was that he was a little selfish; right now, it was no larger cloud on the horizon of his perfection than might be compared to the palm of one's hand, but owing to all this admiration he so constantly received, and the fact that he did not have to exert himself very much to make a cause for popularity, the little cloud was growing.

But Mr. Bennet was really almost as unhappy over this affair as Arethusa herself, after he went over it again very carefully, in the garish light of perspective. Yet he had thought of course he would be permitted to explain at his call this afternoon; that is, explain in so far as he could explain. Which would surely make it all right. He was even prepared to explain to Ross, if it was necessary, and although Mr. Bennet realized that it would not put him in such a very good light in the eyes of Arethusa's father, he felt that Mr. Worthington might understand. And to explain to Ross and to appear so undignified as he was bound to appear, would have been a very hard thing for Mr. Bennet to do, but he was quite prepared to do it; so anxious he was to straighten out this very Miserable Business.

Then Mr. Bennet, as he sorrowfully walked in all the bravery of a most careful toilette made especially for this important call, remembered the little air of dignity with which Arethusa had mentioned marriage. He was genuinely fond of Arethusa. If it had not been for that little cloud of selfishness, no bigger than the palm of one's hand, which was keeping him so much in love with Mr. Bennet, he might have been really in love with her. But there was not quite enough room for Arethusa, although she had crowded into his heart enough for him to give a great deal of thought to her.

"She's a dear," he said aloud, "a perfect dear! And I'm just as sorry as the deuce! But any other girl...."

And he poked his slender cane so deep in between the bricks of the old-fashioned sidewalk of this conservative neighborhood that it was wrenched out of his hand and stood there quivering, and in his pre-occupation with the idea of Arethusa he had gone on without it before he realized.

But then ... Arethusa was not any other girl, and she had had an Aunt Eliza.

* * * * *

"Open the flower box," suggested Ross, "and let's see who they're from."

It was a truly marvelous box of blue violets then disclosed to Arethusa's enraptured gaze. She almost forgot her unhappiness in sheer joy of the wonder of their beauty and fragrance. They were like waxen things in the absolute perfection of their tiny petals; and there seemed to be hundreds of them, each as perfect as a violet ever was, smiling at her with friendly blue faces.

No clue to the sender could be found at first, for no card was visible. She and Ross hunted all through the box, and finally, way down in one corner under the paper, she discovered a damp white scrap.

"Mr. Gridley Warfield Bennet," it read, in irreproachably correct Old English Script.

Into the fire immediately went flowers and box and card, and Arethusa flopped herself back into her chair and buried her head deep to weep such scalding tears as Niobe, synonym for those who really weep, could not have scorned to be seen weeping. Mingled with these tears was more than a trifle of regret that violets so supremely beautiful must be absolutely destroyed because the gift of such a Man!

Arethusa remained determined to go home, and as she really seemed to want to see Miss Asenath so much, Elinor made no attempt to dissuade her of her purpose beyond reminding her of the parties she was sure to miss by rushing off so suddenly. There were several during this very week that Arethusa had been looking forward to. But Parties had no real attraction for Arethusa now; their prospect failed to move her in the least. She only desired to get away as quickly as possible from all the scenes in any way connected with the late Wonderful Mr. Bennet; and to avoid encounters with any of those friends of hers who might be at all likely to guess what had happened. Arethusa felt as if she could not bear to meet Billy Watts again, or the still faithful Mr. Harrison; or any single, solitary one of the boys and girls she had come to know so well these last few weeks. They had all teased her for her adoration of Mr. Bennet, and as friendly as that teasing surely was, she could not trust herself to face it again.

And so, early the very next morning, she took the train for Home. She had so much more to put in her little trunk than she had had when she came that Elinor had sent down town and got her a brand new one to take with her instead, and she carried, as a successor to the ancient handbag with which she had come, a smart little traveling case all fitted out inside, that had been one of her gifts for Christmas. But some dim idea of not hurting Miss Letitia's feelings made her don for this returning journey the quaint little blue suit her aunt had made her.

Everyone in that big house, from Ross and Elinor on down the scale of its inmates to even the outside man who cut the grass and hedges in the summer and cared for the furnace in the winter, was sorry to see her leave them. George forgot his immeasurable dignity as a butler long enough for an excited display of real feeling in begging her most earnestly "to come back again, real soon." Nettie was red-eyed as she packed, the trunk. She would miss Arethusa dreadfully. She was young, and she loved Parties as much as the debutante herself, and it was almost as good as going to them to help Miss Arethusa get ready for them, and then to hear such glowing and vivid descriptions of those Festivities as hers were when she returned home. Clay could hardly guide his car. He, also, was going to miss Arethusa dreadfully.

"You must come back, Arethusa," said Elinor, over and over again. "You must be sure to come back, and soon. For this is just as much your home as that, you know, dear."

And Arethusa promised that she would. She surely did mean to come back, some day. But right now she only wanted Miss Asenath.

The returning traveller was armed, as well as with her legitimate luggage, with a huge box of candy with a flamboyantly colored lady on its top, the shy gift of Clay; a bunch of violets identically like the ones which had to be destroyed yesterday, from Ross; and a most superior package of lunch that Rosalia, most marvelous of cooks, had prepared every bit with her own hands. This really had more significance than either of those other gifts, for it was considerable of a condescension for Rosalia.

Ross put her and all her belongings directly into the charge of the conductor and asked him to please see that she was comfortable every moment, and then the train pulled out. And it pulled out bearing such a different Arethusa from the one who had started to the city so happily and so confident of a Wonderful Time, barely three months ago. But it actually seemed much more like three years to Arethusa, when she considered all that happened to her in that short calendar space.

But after all, as those wheels revolved, faster and faster, it was hard to remain wholly unhappy. She was going back to the Farm and to the warmest sort of welcome from all of them there, she knew; even if she had been guilty of that which would have Miss Eliza's heartiest condemnation should it ever come to her ears. And how glad she, Arethusa, was that she was so soon going to see the folks at the Farm! She was really a little homesick now, for almost the first time since the twenty-fifth of October.

There was no Mrs. Cherry to entertain on this train, and as Arethusa was well worn out with excitement, the whole of the latter half of her journey she slept; and she only woke when the fatherly old conductor bent over her to tell her she had reached Vandalia.



CHAPTER XXIV

Arethusa stood on top of the stile a moment or two and surveyed the old House with eyes that saw none too clearly anything that was before them, before she climbed down; yet she had no real need to actually see it, she knew it all, in every well-loved detail, so well.

It stood there, facing the West, and hugging the earth with that curious appearance of having grown in its place like some sort of solid plant, the green blinds every one swung hospitably open. The January sun was far down in the afternoon sky, and its golden light was reflected in every small and shining square of the square-paned front windows, to make each twinkling pane seem to be smiling a welcome.

And it was all just as neat and precise as ever, although in winter garb instead of that of summer. For the clematis vine over the front porch was a matted heap of dead tendrils (they had died for the season in an orderly way, however) and the little garden at one end of the House was all covered over with straw for the cold weather, and queer little miniature straw stacks were bound around all the rose bushes. Miss Eliza's roses were never known to die during the winter. Only the honeysuckle vine retained its greenness. All the dead leaves had been raked out of the yard, and although the trees stood as gaunt and bare as any other trees at this time of the year, they did not seem naked like other trees. They leaned protectingly towards the house, and they seemed to welcome Arethusa too.

Through the lower windows with their looped white curtains, Arethusa caught a glimpse of the flickering of the sitting-room fire, that fire which warmed Miss Asenath. After all, as dear as Ross and Elinor had proved to be, and as much as she truly loved them, this was Home, as Timothy and Miss Eliza had declared. And how good it was to see it all once more. She had never really known before just how much it meant to her!

Miss Eliza had met her at the station and had scolded her vigorously (scolding sometimes meant that Miss Eliza was trying to control her feelings) nearly all of the six miles from Vandalia, because Arethusa looked so badly, in Miss Eliza's opinion.

"I knew no earthly good would come of it," she said, with a satisfied, I-told-you-so air. "You've come back home sick, after gallivanting around in the city, for me to nurse. And my hands full as they are! I knew just exactly how it would be!"

But Arethusa did not mind this scolding. It was really so much a part of the Home atmosphere that she even rather welcomed it. And she needed a scolding, she felt, so she might as well have it for one thing as for another. This was a mere bagatelle to what Miss Eliza would say if she knew What had happened at the January Cotillion!

Arethusa received her tirade with such unusual meekness that Miss Eliza was alarmed immediately, and convinced that the girl was actually sick.

While the returned wanderer stood on the stile, gazing at the House, the front door flew open and Miss Letitia bustled out, arms outstretched. She almost ran to meet Arethusa. She could not move very fast with such a fat little figure as hers, but she moved faster than she had moved for some years past. And Arethusa dropped every single thing she held and flew down the walk and met Miss Letitia before she was really fairly started.

"Oh, Aunt 'Titia, Aunt 'Titia!"

"There, there," crooned Miss Letitia. "My! My! But we're all glad to get you back! Sister 'Senath's done absolutely nothing but watch the clock ever since we got your father's telegram you were coming. Why, Dearie!" For Arethusa was crying openly on Miss Letitia's comfortable shoulder.

"Arethusa isn't well," remarked Miss Eliza, coming up behind them with most of the dropped belongings; "she must go to bed just as soon as she gets inside the house."

Arethusa lifted her head. "I don't want to go to bed, Aunt 'Liza. I'm not a bit sick."

"Well, do stop carrying on like such a ninny, then!"

But underneath all the sharpness of word and tone of this speech, her niece could somehow read that Miss Eliza was glad to have her back also.

And as for Miss Asenath....

She fairly trembled as she lay on the couch and waited for Arethusa to come to her. She wore the rose-colored birthday gift, but it was not the rose of the shawl that had reflected that faint pink flush to each frail cheek. And it was with all the rush of the old Arethusa across the floor that the girl greeted her dearest of the aunts, and her strong young arms clasped the tiny old lady close to her warm heart in the old loving way. But this Arethusa's eyes were dewy and her voice held a hint of tears; and they were tears which wise Miss Asenath knew almost immediately came not from the mere gladness at being home, after she bade Arethusa stand off so that she might look at her. Miss Asenath, however, said nothing to anybody about her knowledge.

It was good to be at home again, Arethusa felt; good to snuggle down in that old place of hers on the couch and hold Miss Asenath's hand just as she used to; good to watch Miss Letitia's placidity throned in her straight-backed chair and to see her fingers flying as usual and the heap of work in her lap; good even to listen to Miss Eliza's scolding tongue; and good to see Mandy when she waddled in from the kitchen to see "Arethusie" and to state with positiveness that the city did not agree with her at all. But with all of this glow of feeling over getting Home, there was really something wrong, something lacking about it; something Arethusa dimly sensed, but could not exactly define. After awhile Miss Eliza gave her the clue to it, when she imparted the news that Timothy had gone over to Hawesville to a dance.

"Timothy's getting mighty giddy," she added, with great disapproval in voice and manner. "He just gads from one dance to another, all over the county, and he's taken to calling on the town girls. That little visit he made to you in the city had a very bad effect on him, too."

And then with a very little thought, Arethusa knew just what was wrong with her home-coming. It was Timothy.

Timothy, who had always been a part of things for her ever since she could remember, was not there to greet her. Timothy had gone off to a dance and let her come home alone. Timothy, who had always said that he cared more about Arethusa than anyone else in the world, had not seemed to care about her coming back to the Farm. Not in the older, happier days would he have done such a thing as this. And it was well calculated to hurt when she was already so miserable. But then maybe he had not known she was to come; her decision had been so sudden. This might explain.

"Did Timothy know I was coming home to-day?" she asked after a bit, rather timidly.

Miss Eliza snorted. "He most certainly did. I telephoned him myself, this morning, to let him know. That's how I happen to know where he is! You did something to Timothy, Arethusa, when he was in the City to see you. He hasn't been a bit the same since he came home. Gallivanting around with those flip hussies in town! His mother's real worried about him. And he just's running himself thin!"

She would have pursued the subject further, had not Miss Asenath, with gentle diplomacy, interrupted such pursuit. She did not feel as if she could listen to Miss Eliza and Arethusa wrangle over Timothy when the child had just barely got home, after being away so long.

But Arethusa would not have wrangled. She could not have wrangled with Miss Eliza over anything in the world, much less Timothy. She wondered who those girls in town were that he was going to see; Timothy had always declared very emphatically his dislike of the town girls. But she wondered to herself, without asking anybody any questions.

Miss Eliza's sharp eyes watched her niece. She noticed those unusual dark circles under Arethusa's eyes, circles which most certainly were not there when the girl went away; and this strange quietness with which she had come back to them Miss Eliza did not like a bit. The tongue of the Arethusa of three months ago would have gone like a bell clapper under circumstances such as these. And Miss Eliza, who for all her sharp manner and her scolding tongue, loved her niece in her own way as much as either Miss Asenath or Miss Letitia, suddenly wished that she had not let Arethusa make her visit to Lewisburg. She left the sitting-room abruptly and bustled out to the back door to find Blish, whom she scolded most vigorously, much to his astonishment and consternation, for he could not remember a thing he had done or left undone within the last twenty-four hours, since the last scolding, to be scolded for.

Mandy had prepared such a supper for the Arethusa come back to them as not even that much vaunted feast of the prodigal son, for all its fatted calf, could equal. All of Arethusa's favorite dishes were on the table, and it had been set with the company china. Then Mandy and Blish and Nathan, also, came in a group to the door of the dining-room and peeped in with good-natured dark faces stretched wide in brilliant smiling, just to see her eat a few mouthfuls. They were so glad to have her back at the Farm.

Arethusa choked up several times with all the homely kindnesses she received. These dear people who loved her so, how much sweeter they were to her than she at all deserved!

Immediately after supper, Miss Eliza made her niece go to bed. And Arethusa went with such meekness and so altogether unprotesting, that Miss Eliza trotted along up to her room with her, and felt anxiously of her forehead for fever. She was quite positive now that the girl was sick! She bustled around and helped Arethusa undress. She tucked her tightly into the little wooden bed with its turned posts which had always been Arethusa's very own, covering her clear up to her chin with the blue and white squared "counterpin" Miss Letitia had made as a surprise for Arethusa when she should come home. Then Miss Eliza blew out the lamp, efficiently with one blow as always, bade Arethusa peremptorily to go right straight to sleep, and left her. But very unexpectedly, she came back after shutting the door, and trotted briskly across the dark room to give Arethusa a quick little peck on one cheek, which was Miss Eliza's only way of kissing, and to tell her very gruffly that she was awfully glad Arethusa was at home again, and she certainly hoped that she'd have sense enough to stay. Then she once more bade her niece to go straight to sleep and once more departed.

But Arethusa could not go to sleep. She threw back the carefully tucked in covers and got up out of bed, draping the new "counterpin" around her shoulders, and paddled, bare-footed, over to that window of her room which looked in the direction of Timothy's house. It was velvety black over on that horizon, but Arethusa could find the place where the house ought to be. It was a very beautiful night, cold and clear and starry. Arethusa put her head down on the window-sill and gazed up at the stars. There were millions of them, and they all seemed to be winking straight down at her just as sympathetically as possible. She had always loved stars.

As she watched them, a sort of mist began obscuring them from her, and so she brushed at her eyes to wipe it away, but it only seemed to keep on growing to be more decided as a mist; and then it dissolved itself into tears which fell thick and fast, hot tears which splashed on the window-sill ... all because of Timothy's treatment of her on this home-coming afternoon. Arethusa felt as if Timothy's friendship were lost to her forever. Shamed and humiliated by Mr. Bennet, it had remained for life in its cruelty to add this last blow. For unless his feeling for her was absolutely changed, he would never have treated her like this. Arethusa knew Timothy too well.

He had read Mr. Bennet correctly, she remembered now, thinking about her best friend; or about the one who had always, till so recently, been her best friend. He had called Mr. Bennet a "four-flusher." Would that she had not been so blinded in her infatuation as not to heed this warning! She could recall a great many times when Timothy had been proved right in his deductions, which surely ought to have made her place more value on the one concerning Mr. Bennet than she had.

Arethusa felt, just then, as if she would even rather that Miss Eliza should know of that Episode at the January Cotillion than that Timothy should know about it. Timothy's good opinion of her, suddenly, seemed to Arethusa to possess a great charm.

After awhile she crept back into bed, her teeth chattering with the cold, and cried herself to sleep.

In the days which followed Arethusa was kept very busy telling her aunts all that she had done and seen in those three months she had been away from them. And early in the next week, Elinor packed all of the pretty evening frocks which Arethusa, for various scruples, had left hanging in the closet of the green and white room in Lewisburg and sent them down to the Farm, thinking that Arethusa had forgotten them, and might like to have them. There was the Green Frock, and the one like tinted autumn leaves, and the White Dress of her Very Own Party, and many others besides, all reminders of evenings with Mr. Bennet. But even so, Arethusa was glad to see them. She had not realized that she loved them so dearly, until she saw them again. It was just as it had been with the people at the Farm. She spread all the gay beauty of the contents of that box out in the sitting room, and tried them all on, pirouetting and turning and making vivid for the three old ladies who listened to her the parties to which she had worn them.

Miss Letitia was loud in her outspoken admiration of every single frock; her simple heart could not decide which one she liked best, and her seamstress instinct marveled at the wonder of their making. Miss Asenath was more quiet in her approval, but her eyes sparkled at the brightness of their various colors all around her. Miss Eliza was noncommittal, though it was very evident that she found much to displease. When Arethusa tried on the Green Frock which she so dearly loved, she openly expressed her displeasure.

"Did your stepmother," and if ever her rigid little body had signified disapproval of anything it did then, in every line, "did your stepmother permit you to go around dressed like that?"

"All the girls wear dresses like this," replied Arethusa, defensively.

"Then—," began Miss Eliza, with decision, but she snapped her lips together just like a trap and did not finish.

Arethusa, with cheeks that flamed, put away the Green Dress, hung in the darkest corner of the high old walnut wardrobe in her room. The exhibition of the box of clothes ceased abruptly for the time being, and Arethusa fled far away from any chance of Miss Eliza's questions. The Green Dress had been her attire that Fatal Night of the January Cotillion.

Timothy took his time about coming over to see Arethusa, although, had she but known it, it required every bit of self-control he possessed to stay away. He had wanted to rush right over that first afternoon, but his heart was mighty sore still, and he was taking the only way he knew to make Arethusa understand that he did not care in the least how much she gazed adoringly at that very objectionable Mr. Bennet.

She did not see it just exactly that way, however, and as the days went by and she watched for him and he did not come, she put her own construction upon his behavior, and it was right along the line of her conclusions in regard to him that night when she had gazed up at the stars, thinking of him.

But he strolled over, late one afternoon quite formally, just as if he, who had half lived at the Farm all of his life, was making a polite and necessary social call upon its inmates.

Miss Eliza gave him a most vigorous tongue-lashing—before he was quite seated she began it—for going to dances. She considered him headed straight for destruction and had had no opportunity to tell him so. She had seen him but once since he came back from that visit to Arethusa.

"Arethusa dances; ask her to tell you what it's like," he said, most ungraciously.

It was a horrid trick, altogether unworthy of him; but then Timothy was young and things were going hard with him these days. And Miss Eliza's tongue was very sharp; it cut.

So Miss Eliza immediately attacked Arethusa.

"Timothy's of course mistaken. I imagined you'd be going to places where other people did such things, that probably couldn't be helped in a city, but I know you wouldn't so far forget all I've tried to teach you as to indulge in it yourself. It's just public hugging, that's all it is, dancing nowadays!"

"But she did," put in Timothy. "I saw her."

"I can answer for myself, thank you, Timothy Jarvis!" Arethusa said this with a bit of her old asperity. "Yes, I danced, Aunt 'Liza; Father and Mother let me and they didn't think anything was wrong with it."

"Well, I must say! This beats anything I ever heard! I'm not surprised at Ross Worthington, for he was always a bit free in his ideas; but his wife certainly ought to know better than to allow a young girl to take part in such goings on! I must say! I must say!" Miss Eliza's glasses left her nose entirely in her excitement. "What else did you do in the City that you haven't told us about?"

And then ... Arethusa, to the great amazement of everybody, suddenly burst into tears and ran out of the room.

"What on earth ails the child?" inquired Miss Letitia, anxiously. "She's not the least bit like herself!"

"She needs a tonic," answered Miss Eliza decidedly. "I'll see that she begins it, tomorrow. All that carrying-on in the City! Ross Worthington ought to've been ashamed of himself to set by and allow it!" She shut her mouth very grimly. "I'll see to it that she doesn't go there soon again!"

"But he's her father, Sister," interposed Miss Asenath softly; "you must remember that."

"He's her father, 'Senath, and I can't dispute it. But he's an awful unnatural one, the way I look at things! And I reckon, when you get right down to it, Arethusa's just as much my child as she is anybody's, seeing how I've taken care of her ever since she was born and had all the trouble of raising her. And if I know it, she shan't go to Lewisburg again and come home like this, all worn out! I just won't have it!"

And it was not hard for everyone in the room, Timothy included, to realize that Arethusa's future visits to her father would be few and far between, if there were any.

But Miss Asenath, alone of all of them who loved her, dimly guessed at Arethusa's real trouble. And she tried in every way she could to make her tell, for Arethusa had written Miss Asenath pages and pages of rhapsody of the Wonderful Mr. Bennet. But the girl veered away from such a subject, however adroitly introduced, just like a scared rabbit. So after a little while, Miss Asenath gave up her attempt to find out definitely, and contented herself with showing Arethusa that no matter what it was that was troubling her, Aunt 'Senath loved her as much as ever. And her niece clung to the tenderness of this unfailing love as a drowning man clings to a straw; it was the most that was left to her, with the loss of Timothy's comradeship. She took that tonic Miss Eliza procured for her with meek obedience, although it might seem as if Miss Eliza had hunted until she had found the bitterest and nastiest that she could find. But Arethusa only grew paler and thinner than ever; she lost her appetite also, in spite of the tonic. Ere long, Miss Asenath's intuition told her something else. It was Timothy causing this, she believed, and not something that had happened in the City.

And it was Timothy.

He was as top-loftical and as haughty as possible. He made his visits to the Farm of a scarcity and brevity that brought them near to being no visits at all. Such times as he did condescend to come over to see them, he spent the moments telling of all those gay affairs of which he was a part and which Arethusa did not attend, with a brave show of worldliness that deceived them all except Miss Asenath. Miss Eliza shook her head over him. She did not like this change in Timothy.

Arethusa alternated between a desire to slap him for his suddenly acquired society veneer which had such power to irritate her, and a desire to weep the bitterest and most scalding tears for the completeness of his defection. She could not help wondering, sometimes, if he had, by any most uncanny chance, heard of that Episode at the January Cotillion; and knew that Mr. Bennet had Kissed her and that she had believed that he wanted to marry her and he had Not. The Thought made her writhe in agony under the new blue and white "counter-pin." Rather would she have died a thousand deaths than to have Timothy know of that Disgrace!

For he had been to the City twice since she had come home, with his other gadding about; flying trips—"on business," it is true he had said they were—yet he might have heard of it. All Lewisburg might be ringing with it. Such would undoubtedly explain quite satisfactorily his present scorn of her. He did not seem in the least anxious to marry her now.

Timothy, however, no matter what Arethusa thought concerning him and his gayety and his neglect of her, was having the hardest of hard times. If Arethusa cried herself to sleep at night, and he did not, being masculine and not much given to taking a refuge in tears, he suffered none the less keenly. It seemed to Timothy that he would never, as long as he lived, forget Arethusa's lovely face as she danced with Mr. Bennet that night of her New Year's Party. Every single time he saw her now, it seemed to bring before him the picture she was that night; wearing Mr. Bennet's flowers (he was quite sure that he knew now just who had sent her those flowers) and with that wonderful shine in her eyes just for Mr. Bennet. But he was determined that she should not know that it made any difference to him.

Poor Timothy!

He loved Arethusa more than he ever had, with all the wealth of love his clean young heart had in its power to give, now that he thought her unattainable and with all her own affection given to another man. And this same heart that loved her so ached and ached over Arethusa's paleness and thinness; but he accepted Miss Eliza's explanation as the literal one, that the winter in Lewisburg had been too much for her, and that all she needed was a tonic. Had Timothy talked a little to Miss Asenath, as in the old and far happier days, he might have formed very different conclusions. Yet he would have bitten out his tongue rather than have mentioned Mr. Bennet's hated name, even to gentle Miss Asenath, who never failed to understand all that troubled.

So Timothy and Arethusa played at their cross purposes all through the spring.

For the winter had sped itself away somehow and before anyone was really aware of its coming, spring had slipped upon all of them. The days grew warm once more and Arethusa might once again take her books back to the congenial solitude of Miss Asenath's Woods, where, with a thick, woolly carriage rug spread on the ground under the hollow tree, she lay for long hours and read or dreamed. Miss Eliza absolutely refused to countenance any sitting or lying on the damp earth of spring without that rug beneath her, in Arethusa's present state of seeming ill-health; but she made no objections to as many hours spent in the woodland as Arethusa pleased, only provided the rug was there too.

Timothy was very busy, as all farmers needs must be in the spring. The garden had to be got in, and the fields plowed and planted. He did not have nearly so much time for gadding, and Miss Eliza was pleased. She told him she was every chance she had to do so.

Timothy looked much older, Miss Asenath thought. He had a great deal more dignity, and his blue eyes seemed to have acquired depth. There were stern little lines in his face that had never been there before; just as if the boy Timothy had given place to the man. Miss Asenath loved these evidences of his growing.

But often, when he made his rare and formal visits to the Farm of an evening and he and Arethusa sat so decorously in front of the sitting-room fire with the family, she watched him then a trifle sadly. Miss Asenath believed that she would almost be glad to hear him and Arethusa quarrel once more.

"Poor children!" she said to herself one night. "I wonder when they're going to even begin realising how much time they're wasting! All these precious days are slipping by and nothing can ever bring them back!"

And then, with her frail hands clasped on the locket at her throat, Miss Asenath fell to dreaming.



CHAPTER XXV

Arethusa gathered up her woolly rug and a dog-eared copy of "Jane Eyre," which would have known almost instant confiscation if Miss Eliza had glimpsed it in her possession, and proceeded to go down to the woodland. It was an afternoon in early May, and unseasonably hot. As she passed through the kitchen, Mandy paused in her bread-making and looked around. She shook her head at the girl's evident intention, with disapproval.

"I wouldn' be gwine out theah to be settin' this arternoon, Arethusie. It are gwine to rain," she stated with positiveness. Mandy was by way of being something of a weather prophet.

"Nonsense, Mandy! The sky's as blue as blue! There's not a cloud anywhere!" Arethusa dismissed the idea with laughter. "Don't be such an old prophet of evil!"

"Yes'sum, it are gwine to rain." Mandy left the table and went to the door, her hands full of bread dough, to peer out at the metallic looking sky, "and 'foah ve'y long, too. See thet theah?" She pointed to a low brownish grey line far down on the horizon.

"Oh that! That doesn't mean anything!" Arethusa was not to be deterred.

She trailed the rug after her across the orchard and into the woodland without noticing that it was touching the ground nearly all the way.

Miss Asenath's Woods were very beautiful just now; they were always at their loveliest in the spring. The May-apples were in full bloom, and the ground was splotched with great clumps of them, with their straight waxy stems and their pale green umbrella-like leaves, almost hiding the delicate flowers. Everywhere, through the woodland, were all sorts of ambitious, tiny trees which would be choked out later on by the heaviness of the growth above them, but just at present they lifted their beginning life towards the sun, each one as erect as possible; making, all together, something that seemed like a miniature forest. A love-vine, sentimentally named parasite, was starting its curling way over one of the shrubs; the moss was tinted with new green; and blue and white and purple violets showed their saucy faces here and there in patches, scattered with bits of the straight dark-green of the spears of the star of Bethlehem leaves which made a contrast for the lighter color of the violet foliage. And the spring world was all very still, and very peaceful.

Arethusa spread the rug underneath the Hollow Tree, and lay down upon it, resting her head on her crossed arms. She looked above her into the curving arch of those faraway branches, their gnarled age made beautiful with the tenderness of young leaves. Some of these were so small and delicately curly in their newness, they were almost like the crumpling of a baby's fingers. Patches of the bright blue sky showed through them all. An alert robin ran across the woodland like a very fat little man in a terrible hurry, and he paused at the edge of the rug to look at Arethusa inquiringly, his head on one side. But she never moved an inch to notice him, and so, quite satisfied that she was nothing that could harm him, he pecked about within three feet of her head.

Dreaming was her favorite occupation through these spring days, dreaming of the future and what it might bring to her. And Arethusa, believing that she knew just exactly what was to happen by reason of what had already happened, settled the outlines of this future in her dreaming, over and over again, without a single ray of light to break through the darkness of her picture. She would spend it here at the Farm, this strangely quiet Farm; more than ever "a household of women," without Timothy running in and out every day. And some day she would be old and grey like Miss Eliza, busy farming it herself, and wearing plain black dresses and scolding the servants when they did not do just as she wanted. It was a blank future that contained no Timothy. But Arethusa could not very well put Timothy into the future when he refused to be in the present. She would always live alone, she decided, and when she was quite old she would wear a locket like Miss Asenath's, and people would speak of her as having had a Romance; for she had had a Romance, and it had ended very sadly. But she would not wear Mr. Bennet's picture in her locket; he was not worthy of that. Perhaps she might wear Timothy's. She had a splendid picture of Timothy which would look very well in a Locket. There were times when, comparing them, Arethusa was quite of the opinion that Timothy was far handsomer than Mr. Bennet. And even if he did go off and marry some one else, he could surely have no objection to her honoring his picture so. His grandfather had not minded Miss Asenath's ownership of his miniature, and he had married some one else, because she had loved him when he was young. Arethusa had always loved Timothy; she loved him now. If Timothy would only stop to think long enough, he would remember the hundreds of times she had told him he was the best friend she had ever had.

Timothy had found, besides his farmer's duties, another way to occupy himself this spring. It was an automobile of very recent acquisition, a long, dark, grey car of beauty. And nearly every night he raced past the front gate of the Farm in it, while Arethusa stood under the shadow of the clematis vine on the front porch and listened for the first low hum of its motor which carried so far ahead of it through the sleeping country, and watched to see its light come flashing up the Pike, drawing back hastily under the vine when it was close to the gate. Timothy had stopped once or twice and asked them all to ride, but he had never asked Arethusa alone. And since he did not ask her by herself, she was too proud to hop in beside him when Miss Letitia and Miss Eliza refused his invitation. If either one of them had gone, it would have been all right. But neither would.

No human power could have got Miss Letitia into it, and Miss Eliza considered it such a sinful waste of money when Timothy told her how much it had cost him, that she showed her great disapproval by declining to even sit in it.

But nearly every night it whizzed by on the way to town, and Arethusa watched for it in the shadow of the clematis vine.

* * * * *

Arethusa sighed deeply, and reached for "Jane Eyre," at the side of the rug.

It was a most abused and mistreated copy of this work, bearing her father's name on its fly leaf, which she had found on a recent rummaging through the garret. A glance through its pages had made her most anxious to read it. It seemed to be rich with sentiment and entertainment, of a truly Romantick nature.

She had read only as far as Jane's venture into the world of Mr. Rochester last night, when forced by the unfeeling Miss Eliza who viewed no printed matter as of such interest as to make for any forgetfulness of what one ought to do, with a stern call from the foot of the stairs, to "put out that light, and stop whatever it is you're reading this minute, and go straight to sleep!" Arethusa had wept bitterly over the cruelty of the early years; she hoped, this afternoon, to see Jane through to an uninterrupted conclusion of Perfect Happiness such as she so unmistakably deserved.

She read eagerly; her grey-green eyes following the lines of print without once lifting. Her only movement was the turning of the leaves, until a large and splashing drop of something fell plump on the page then open, and she wiped it off. But another fell, immediately after it; then another. It was Mandy's rain.

So Arethusa rose and gathered up her rug to start for the house. In her recently acquired submissiveness, the disobeying of Miss Eliza to stay out in a rain seemed to have no attraction.

But the storm broke with such quickness and fury, that Arethusa got no farther towards the house than a big oak a few yards away from the Hollow Tree. Underneath this, she crouched, covering her head with her arms. For the first time in her life she was frightened of a storm. But then, she never remembered having seen such a battle of the elements as this became, in the fewest possible moments. In fact, for years afterwards, folks in the neighborhood spoke of happenings as being just before, or just after, the "Big Storm."

The lightning flashed so continuously that the heavens were like one steady glare of white light; the thunder boomed and crashed in a hideous din without any cessation. The rain beat against her as sharp as needle points, and the wind seemed as if it were trying to lift her off the ground to fling her back again to crush, so hard it blew. Several trees within her observation went down, some torn up by the roots; Arethusa could have wept miserably to see them go, these woodland friends of hers. "Jane Eyre" was blown from her unheeding grasp and against a crooked root of the oak tree. Its water-soaked pages flapped madly back and forth; the equally water-soaked rug had been flung against a near-by bush, wide spread like a sail.

Then suddenly, with a rush and a roar as if the world itself were being torn from its moorings, the Hollow Tree, the very dearest of all the growth in Miss Asenath's Woods, went crashing to the ground. It fell through the tree against which Arethusa crouched, carrying branches of the latter along with it. It was a pure miracle that she was not hit by some of these flying branches, or by the Hollow Tree itself, in its fall; for it was all around her, hemming her into a prison of instantaneous building so that she could not move. Undoubtedly, had she stayed under the Hollow Tree after the Storm began, she would have been killed.

But with this last desecration the Storm seemed satisfied; its fury abated. And ere long leaves slowly dripping and birds chirping were the only sounds.

Arethusa shivered. Her teeth were chattering, partly through fear and partly because she was really very cold. The Storm had seemed to wring every single bit of warmth out of the air, and she had been wet to the skin with that stinging, chilly rain. Her tears fell fast as she reached to touch the Hollow Tree, all about her. Would that the wind had blown down every single tree in the woodland if it had only left her this one!

She tried to climb out. But every attempt she made was unsuccessful. She was pinned in against the oak tree by interlocked branches which her strength seemed unavailing to so much as disturb. It seemed that all she could do would be to lie helplessly back and wait for somebody to come and find her before she could get out.

But would she have to stay in this place all night before anyone did come? And wait until they could chop her out after they came? How many hours would that take? It might even take days! This was such a big tree!

The thought brought a sudden overwhelming terror of her predicament.

She began calling loudly and frantically for everyone at the house; Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia, Blish and Nathan and Mandy, but none of them came. She even called Miss Asenath, hoping she would hear and tell the others.

Then ... she called Timothy.

And Timothy came.

He plunged through the dripping woodland as if on wings or seven-leagued boots, unmindful of the sloppy ground and the wet branches which flopped back as he passed to sting his face, and he came as straight to Arethusa as it was possible for him to come. He had stopped at the Farm to get out of the Storm, on his way back from town, and 'way up there at the house, standing on the back porch watching it, he had heard her calls for Miss Eliza and the rest, and then for him.

But once in the woodland, and there was no visible evidence of her presence, when he had been so sure just where she was to be found, Timothy stopped running and called wildly himself for Arethusa.

"Here I am!" It sounded thin and like a ghost voice, coming from underneath the piled up heap of broken tree right beside him in the most uncanny way.

"Merciful Heavens!" Timothy knelt down and began making frantic efforts to move the huge branches. "Are you hurt?"

"Not a single bit!" Arethusa's spirits began an immediate reviving. Here was Timothy! The unmistakable cheerfulness in her tones somewhat reassured her rescuer. "Only I can't get out!"

"And you're quite positive you're not hurt?" He asked the question solely for the comfort of hearing her repeat that she was not. For he did not see how she had escaped death in such a catastrophe.

"Sure!"

Arethusa, feeling now so much happier, thought that perhaps she might stand upright. She tried the experiment cautiously and found that she could. Her head and shoulders appeared dryad-like above the young green of the leaves beneath her, and leaves and branches framed her face all around. She waved her hand energetically, and called, to attract the stooping Timothy's attention to her present superior position.

His relief when he saw her was almost comical.

"I'll have you out now in a jiffy!"

But such was not to be the case, for although he poked and poked about everywhere distractedly, and pulled at first one part of it and then another, he was unable to move any of that tree, for all his great strength. Then, very unexpectedly, sticking his head around under the lower branches next the ground, he discovered what seemed to offer some possibilities as a road to Arethusa. He started exploration, and very suddenly, he was right beside her.

Now that his anxiety for her safety was no longer rampant, Timothy could see for himself that Arethusa had not a scratch, he remembered the present state of their relationship. That look of sternness which made his young face seem so much older settled down, and he made business-like preparations to help her get out, breaking off small branches all about him.

"Do you think you could crawl back the way I came in here, or do you want me to go back up to the house and get something to cut the tree away?"

But Arethusa was loath to leave just yet. This seemed so much like old times, the way he had come at her call, when he had used to help her down from hay-stacks which she had climbed too rashly, and rescue her from all sorts of other strange situations. She could not see his face, and so she clasped his arm, gratefully, as she had used to do in those other days. Timothy stiffened a little, but she did not notice it.

"Oh, Timothy!" she exclaimed. "Just suppose you hadn't come! I might have had to stay here all night long!"

"I reckon not! Somebody would have come."

She was chilled by his tone. And when she looked up at him, his grim expression made her draw her hand away from his arm, abruptly.

"How did you get in?" she asked, with dignity.

Timothy indicated the road.

So a little procession started back through that gap in the branches, which Arethusa, had she not been so frightened, might have found for herself without bothering him. He went first, to show the way, and she followed, both on hands and knees. He was out when he heard her scream.

"My hair! My hair is all caught! And I can't get it undone at all!"

She had not really asked for his help, but Timothy turned and crept under the tree once more. Arethusa was badly caught. Her red hair had been grabbed by the crookedest possible branch and it was all wound around it as if the Hollow Tree were so determined to keep her underneath it that either the branch or some of her hair would have to be cut off, before it would let her go. And Arethusa's own efforts to get loose had only succeeded in fastening her tighter.

She accepted Timothy's offer of aid as one who is forced to something inevitable, and bent her head obediently so that he could get at the snarl better. Timothy worked away in silence, his knees braced in the soft ground. His fingers were never very good at this sort of thing, and right now they seemed to become clumsiness personified. They trembled so that the snarl seemed to grow worse and worse with each moment. He gritted his teeth and tried his best to control his hands and his heart, which raced and beat so loudly above the crouching girl. He was quite sure she heard it. This nearness was almost more than he could bear.

And to have his hands buried in that fragrant mass of the hair he loved, suddenly proved his undoing.

He stopped his ineffectual work of untangling; but Arethusa did not know that he had until she felt herself held close to a wildly beating heart and heard him whispering, hoarsely, "Arethusa, I ... I just can't bear it ... any longer!"

Then Timothy Kissed her. He kissed her hungrily; her hair, caught in the branches, her startled eyes, her cheeks, and last of all, her mouth.

"I love you," he said, brokenly, over and over again. "I love you!"

And Arethusa lay very quietly, and listened to him say it.

"I can't get your hair out," said Timothy, miserably, "I'll go and get somebody at the house to come, but I...."

Then Arethusa spoke, softly.

"I don't want you to go get somebody at the house. I want you, yourself, to get my hair out."

He almost groaned. Why did she make things so terribly hard for him? Suddenly, something occurred to Timothy. Arethusa had not even tried to slap him for those kisses, nor had she made even the beginnings of a struggle to get away; which was all most un-Arethusa like. He looked down at her, and he saw that her eyes were full of a truly wonderful light, a light which he had never seen in those eyes before, and it was shining straight at him.

"I want you to get my hair out," she repeated, "but bef ... before you do, T ... Timothy, please ki ... kiss me again!"

Timothy did as requested.

And the whole world did seem to really be hushed into a Startled Silence by What had happened.

And Arethusa forgot that her hair was fastened apparently inextricably in the branches of the Hollow Tree; perhaps the Hollow Tree had served its best purpose in crashing to the ground. She forgot all about Mr. Bennet and that Timothy might not want to marry her if he knew of the Episode of the January Cotillion. She forgot to question the propriety of the number of Timothy's kisses, as too many before their marriage. She thought of nothing in the wide, wide world but just one thing; that never had she felt more contented than where she was, held in the safety of these strong arms of Timothy's. They seemed to shut her in to guard from all unhappiness or terror, or anything that could possibly hurt her in the days to come. It was just as though she had found a place most truly her own, made for her by Timothy's love; and that it was exactly what she had been searching for, for a long, long while.

But she was still Arethusa.

So after a time she stirred, and said very softly, "I can't possibly stay here all my life with my hair caught like this, Timothy, you know. I ... I really think you'd better undo it. I asked you to."

He roused himself with a happy little laugh, and as his fingers were not trembling so much, this attempt was quite successful, and the red locks were soon free.

Then they crawled through the place in the branches and stood upright, face to face, Arethusa's head drooped, and a warm flush mounted suddenly. She could not be said to be at her best appearance, for her hair was all matted and tangled, and wildly disheveled; her dress was muddy to her knees, and torn in several places; there were dirty marks on her face. But to Timothy, she had never looked lovelier in her life.

It was his suggestion that they have a run up to the house.

Hand in hand, they set off at a mad pace through the orchard. Miss Eliza saw them coming, for she was restlessly waiting on the back porch; she had been waiting for some time. She was grim and disapproving as the flushed pair brought up, panting, before her.

"Well, Arethusa...." she began.

But Timothy interposed in a very masterful sort of way.

"You mustn't scold her, Miss 'Liza, for she came very near being killed!" He drew Arethusa's hand through his arm with a little air of proprietorship which did not escape unnoticed. "The big Hollow Tree fell and it pinned her down. I had an awfully hard time getting her out from under it."

At a sudden recollection of the getting Arethusa out from under the tree he blushed boyishly, and most violently, even through his flush of running. Arethusa followed suit.

"Hum ... ph!" said Miss Eliza.

She regarded them both with keen eyes for a moment, those keen eyes of hers that so little escaped.

"Have you," she asked suddenly, and so suddenly that both boy and girl jumped, "have you decided to marry Timothy at last, Arethusa?"

"Yes," replied Timothy.

"No," replied Arethusa, although very weakly, for it was more from force of habit than anything else.

Timothy put his arm clear around her quite unashamed before Miss Eliza, to the deep interest and great delight of Mandy, peering through the kitchen door; and he drew the unresisting girl close to his side.

"Yes," he repeated, with firmness, "she has!"

Arethusa looked up at him sideway, at the strength of his young profile; and feeling his arm around her and remembering how strong and sure that arm had seemed such a little while before, like a bulwark for safety between her and anything that might threaten, she answered meekly, almost like an echo, "Yes, I have!"

And this was quite in spite of the fact (and yet that may have been the very reason why she did, for she had always declared so emphatically that she would say, "no!" to any such proposition coming from him) that Timothy had made no formal proposal of marriage to her so far this summer.

THE END