Timothy gathered a handful of small stones lying near him and began to idly skip them one by one across the Branch. It was an accomplishment which Arethusa deeply envied him: her stones invariably fell in without skipping. Yet she made no move to show him that she saw how beautifully every single stone that Timothy skipped sped across the top of the water to the other side. Miss Johnson came and sat down between them, worn out in her vain search for her stick, and she panted and gazed inquiringly from one to the other of her playmates, so unusually silent.

"I don't see why," said Timothy suddenly, "that you want to act this way, Arethusa. I've said I was sorry. That ought to be quite enough; and ... and.... Anyway, I don't see why one kiss should make you so mad."

"Oh, you don't?" replied Arethusa, very sarcastically.

Life had seemed a gloomy affair to Timothy since the day he had realized that Arethusa was actually going on this Visit. He did not want her to go, to put it very plainly. Not that he thought she would not have a good time; he thought she would have a good time; in fact, he thought she would have far too good a time, his verbal expression to Arethusa of the contrary idea, notwithstanding. Timothy had made more than one visit to Lewisburg; he was well acquainted with the variety of its attractions. He could not help but vision the oceans of beings of the opposite s.e.x it was inevitable she should meet, and he saw in these meetings his own eclipse as a suitor.

Timothy's Ardent Wish for Arethusa and himself was identical with Miss Asenath's Secret Hope and Miss Eliza's Openly Expressed Desire. And Arethusa had not exaggerated in the least, to Miss Eliza, the number of his proposals. He had been proposing to her every summer with worthy persistence since he was nine or ten, childish though those first proposals may have been; and sometimes twice a summer.

Ever since that time when she had made the first appeal to his chivalry when he had met her, a chubby little sc.r.a.p of only three scant summers, wandering off down the Pike, every little footfall taking her farther and farther away from the Farm, and she had raised her eyes, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with tears in their wonderful tangle of black lashes, and said, with a tiny catch in her voice, "I'm losted. Tate me home, Boy!"; and he, with the superior knowledge of location which seven years gives over three, had led her safely back to Miss Eliza--ever since that long-past day, Arethusa had made up the most of Timothy's world. They had played together all through childhood and boyhood and girlhood, and quarreled violently and much over their play, and then made up with commendable immediacy; Timothy was the nearest approach to a brother Arethusa had ever known. But Timothy's feeling for Arethusa had ever been, and especially these last few years, more than a brother's love.

It was the clean whole-hearted affection which a boy gives to the one girl in the world who seems to him superior to other girls. Even when Timothy had gone away to a neighboring town to college, his allegiance had never for a moment been shaken; in all those four long years he had never seen a single maiden, among the many he had met, who came anywhere near Arethusa in his estimation.

Timothy had had some dim idea that it might be quite wise to get her safely promised to himself before she went away. The last point-blank refusal she had made him, earlier in this summer, had not left him altogether disheartened. He knew Arethusa was given to moods. Then, too, persistence often wins the reluctant; dripping water wears away a stone. There are a great many aphorisms dealing directly with such a state of mind as Timothy's.

So the evening just before this hot September morning, he had dressed himself in his very best and strolled over to the Farm, fully determined on a definite course of action.

He had made his formal proposal for Arethusa's hand to Arethusa herself, as they sat side by side on the top step of the worn stone steps to the front porch. But she had laughed at him, so derisively, that Timothy, goaded into rashness by the laughter, had kissed her with a resounding smack. Then he had been slapped by the indignant Arethusa until his check stung with the pain, sent straight home and told never to come back again as long as he lived.

And he had wondered, as he cut across the fields, a chastened and a sadder Timothy under the friendly stars which winked so sympathetically, and rubbing his still stinging cheek as he walked, if there would ever be anybody who would understand Arethusa. He didn't. He could recall occasions when he had kissed her and had not been slapped.

Now Miss Eliza had unfortunately heard the conversation and the kiss and the slap and the dismissal of Timothy, from inside the sitting-room; and she had called Arethusa into her after the rejected suitor had fled and outdone even herself in the quality of her scolding. She had gone so far as to make a threat of such a truly horrible nature that it had turned Arethusa absolutely cold with the fear that she might really carry it out.

Arethusa had every right to be very angry with Timothy.

Timothy gathered him another little heap of stones, and one by one, with a perfect mastery of the art, skipped those all across the water.

But he did it very gloomily, with no apparent pleasure, hardly as if conscious of what he were doing. And Arethusa continued to stare straight before her as if she had found new and unexpected beauties in a familiar landscape.

"I hate for us to be mad," said Timothy after awhile, making another attempt to break the hostile little silence.

"So do I," replied Arethusa non-committally.

Timothy brightened.

"But I expect to be mad at you as long as I live," she continued, and Timothy lapsed into gloom once more, "when you act the way you do. I don't see why you want to be always bothering me about marrying you; unless Aunt 'Liza puts you up to it. I don't want to marry you, Timothy; and I'll never change my mind about it. You needn't ask me again, ever. I want to be very good friends with you, because you're the very oldest friend I've got, but we can't be friends if you're going to be so silly and sentimental all the time. I hate sentimental people!"

Had Timothy's sense of humor not deserted him absolutely, he must have laughed at this; as it was, he took it very seriously.

Just then came a faint, "Ar----ee--thu----sa!" from the direction of the house, and Arethusa rose quickly to answer the call.

"Oh, I forgot," Timothy rolled over. "Miss 't.i.tia called to me from the house as I came by to tell you she was ready for you."

"Why didn't you tell me then, an hour ago? You've been here a half hour at least and haven't said a word about it!"

"I forgot," replied Timothy humbly, thoroughly ground to the earth by that speech of Arethusa's with its "I'll be a sister to you" tone.

"That's evident. She probably thinks I'm lost or something by this time. If you weren't so busy always seeing how you can annoy me, you might remember when people give you messages to deliver!" Arethusa swept majestically off, bending her head to escape the low-growing willow branches, and Timothy watched her miserably. But she had gone only about six or seven paces when she turned and came back to him, "And Timothy," she announced, as sternly as Miss Eliza herself might have spoken, "if you ever even try to kiss me again, like you did last night, I'll do something worse to you than just slap. I'll ... I'll ...

It's ... I don't like to be kissed."

"But you used to kiss me," Timothy sat upright, here was his alibi and a chance to defend himself.

"I know I did, but we were babies. That was ages ago, and it's very, very different. Grown girls don't kiss grown men. It's not nice.

It's.... It's just like poor white trash!"

And with last stroke of annihilation, Arethusa departed for the house and Miss Let.i.tia and her fitting, with Miss Johnson trotting at her heels, leaving Timothy in abject abandonment to misery under the willow tree.

CHAPTER IX

Miss Eliza eyed Arethusa over her gla.s.ses with stern displeasure. She dropped her sewing into her lap and prepared to take the delinquent one to task.

"Where have you been all this time? Your Aunt 't.i.tia's been ready and waiting for you a half hour at least."

"Oh, Sister, not quite that long." Miss Let.i.tia's deprecatory accents made an attempt (and it could always be only an attempt) to stem the tide of Miss Eliza's severity. "It's not been more than fifteen minutes, I'm sure."

"Your aunt has been ready and waiting for you a half hour at least!"

repeated Miss Eliza, firmly. "Didn't you understand from her message that she wanted you? And I had to call you, myself, finally."

"Well, I didn't get any message.... Timothy didn't tell me she wanted me, so how was I to know? I came right straight away when I heard you."

"You've been quarreling with Timothy again!"

"_I have not!_"

And at Arethusa's irritable tone, Miss Asenath looked up, startled. It was so decided a contradiction, and not one of the household ever contradicted Miss Eliza. This gentlest one was a trifle the most discerning of the sisters, and she wondered if any other chapters to last night's incident had been added under the willow tree.

"Don't you speak to me in that manner, Arethusa," Miss Eliza was surprised almost into a mildness of reproof.

"I didn't mean to be impertinent, Aunt 'Liza," faltered the culprit.

She was a wee bit frightened at her own temerity after that emphatic contradiction had burst forth. But anger at Timothy had over-ridden discretion, with that question concerning him and Miss Eliza's obvious inclination to side with him; last night's events were still clear in Arethusa's mind, and Miss Eliza had been most unfair in her viewpoint on that occasion. There still rankled, with both aunt and niece, a little of the bitterness then aroused.

"You are getting," remarked Miss Eliza grimly, "absolutely incomprehensible to me. Ever since that letter came from your father, you have been utterly demoralised. I've half a mind to...."

Miss Let.i.tia hastily held up the dress to be slipped on. She felt it was undoubtedly the moment, the moment sometimes called psychological, at which to introduce a counter-irritant.

It was the dark blue silk dress that Arethusa had been sure she would have. It was as beautifully made as all Miss Let.i.tia's garments were, but very plain; only lightened at throat and wrists with the simplest white collar and cuffs. Arethusa was very grateful to Miss Let.i.tia for having made it. She expressed her grat.i.tude by an all-enveloping hug which ruffled the small portion of Miss Let.i.tia's hair remaining comparatively smooth until this moment. But she did wish, most decidedly, that it was not quite so plain.

Miss Let.i.tia smoothed the folds in the skirt and put a pin in one place in the hem where she believed it hung a little bit long.

"Do you think," she enquired anxiously of Miss Eliza, "that it hangs all right in other places, Sister?"

"If Arethusa would stop spinning around like a top long enough for me to get a good look at it, I might be able to tell you something about it," replied Miss Eliza, severely.

Arethusa straightened up like a drum major and began turning very slowly, as slowly as it was possible and keep her balance at the same time, and Miss Eliza viewed the lower edge of the garment critically from all sides.

"Yes," was her crisp verdict, "I may say I think it hangs even everywhere.... But just that one place."