The Heart of Arethusa Part 29

"It's a perfectly beautiful day, isn't it?"

Miss Warren seemed to thaw a trifle. "It's just gorgeous outside!"

"I like fall better than spring, always," replied Arethusa, "and especially when it's like this."

"Yes," agreed Miss Warren.

The silence descended once more, to be first broken by Miss Warren with the polite inquiry, "Do you play bridge, Miss Worthington?"

Arethusa's surprised gray eyes were removed from the window to which they had returned with the silence, to be fixed on Miss Warren.

"Do I what?" she exclaimed.

"Play bridge."

Miss Warren made this contribution to conversation for no other reason than that it had a strong personal appeal. And from her point of view, it had more possibilities as a theme for development than had the weather; the silence had grown almost oppressive.

Arethusa laughed gaily. She had played a game called "London Bridge"

when she was quite small, she and Timothy and the little darkies from the washer-woman's cabin, and they had all liked it very much as a game; but they had never thought of calling it just "bridge."

"I used to play London Bridge when I was little, but of course I don't now."

"I meant cards," explained the visitor with a well-bred smile. "I'm perfectly mad about it. Though some people do like auction better, I never have."

Her smile had nettled her hostess. It had a calm superiority about it that was rather trying. "No," she replied, shortly. "No, I don't know anything about it, or that other thing either. Aunt 'Liza says playing cards are wicked."

The delicate black eyebrows of the visitor lifted a little.

"It's too bad if you don't play. There're so many bridge parties given here. And," she added, "Mr. Bennet plays a beautiful game."

Arethusa decided that Miss Warren was not nearly so pretty as she had at first considered her.

At this critical juncture, George made his entrance with the tea-tray.

Arethusa remembered she was a hostess and had a guest. She enquired if the guest would care for some tea.

The guest would be delighted to have some tea. She was famished, she added.

But Arethusa made no reply to this sally. She had not yet forgiven that last remark about Mr. Bennet's ability as a bridge-player.

While the tea and its attendant sandwiches were consumed almost in silence, Arethusa did some thinking. When in Rome do as the Romans do is an excellent old saw, and although Miss Eliza's views on the subject of games played with a deck of cards were firm and had been expressed so as not to be mistaken, Arethusa was meditating open defiance. If the Wonderful Mr. Bennet played bridge, then she, Arethusa, would learn the game, Miss Eliza or no Miss Eliza.

Over her last sandwich, she eyed Miss Warren.

"Is it very hard to learn?"

"What?"

"That.... That card game you called 'bridge'?"

Miss Warren laughed with softness. Arethusa was really rather amusing.

"Why, not at all, I think, for some people. Would you care to learn?

I'd be delighted to teach you myself, sometime. Mr. Bennet says I play a very good game."

Arethusa choked on her sandwich.

"I don't think I shall bother _you_," she said, pointedly; "Mr. Bennet would show me, if I asked him, I reckon."

Once more Miss Warren's well-bred and superior smile shone forth to arouse resentment. "I think if I were you, Miss Worthington, that I would ask some one else first, because," very kindly, "Gridley Bennet is a perfect old maid about his game. It bores him almost to tears to play with a poor player or a beginner. I've heard him say so more than once. And men just simply hate that sort of thing when they do hate it, you know."

The air with which Miss Warren called the Wonderful Mr. Bennet by his Christian name was galling. It bespoke a degree of intimacy with his charming self from which Arethusa felt herself far removed. And her manner of stating his likes and dislikes was that of one who knew.

Arethusa boiled over.

"I didn't ask your advice!" she exploded. "And when I want any of it, I'll let you know!"

Miss Warren looked surprised.

"Why, I...." she began, and then she decided that it was time to leave.

She could not quarrel with Arethusa, and Arethusa looked very ready to quarrel.

As Miss Warren made her way gracefully homeward along the avenue, she decided that she really had nothing to fear from Mr. Bennet's casual attentions to the visiting lady at parties. She was countrified and queer, and her clothes were awful. Miss Warren knew Mr. Bennet to be a gentleman of taste. Yet she was glad she had made the call, for she had rather enjoyed it. It would be fun to tell Gladys, friend nearest her heart, all about it.

Arethusa went up the stairs about three at a time, and burst into Ross's room like a small whirlwind, cheeks glowing and hands still clenched in righteous anger at Miss Warren.

"Well, well," exclaimed Ross, "what has happened? Did not the fair Candace come up to expectations?"

"I thought you said she was a dear girl!" Arethusa looked accusingly at Elinor.

"And isn't she?" asked Ross mischievously.

"She's ... she's a cat!" said Arethusa with emphasis. "She said perfectly awful things to me, and she was as nasty as could be to me about Mr. Bennet!"

"So that is where the shoe pinches! Elinor, dearest, methinks there is one of your friends' daughters who has no sort of attraction for our daughter. But Arethusa, my child, I told you, when you first mentioned his name, that he was in a cla.s.s apart. I told you that he was no lonely floweret wasting his sweetness on the desert air, and that the compet.i.tion where you would compete was keen. I told you...."

"Ross, for heaven's sake!" laughed Elinor.

"Arethusa is only finding out the truth of my words," replied Ross seriously. "She will learn to depend on her father with one or two more experiences of this kind."

Arethusa perched herself on the arm of Ross's big chair, and Ross tweaked at her ear affectionately. "Is that not so, mine own daughter?"

Arethusa disregarded this question, and asked one of her own.

"Could I learn bridge, do you reckon?"

Ross jumped. "Shades of Miss Eliza!"

"But could I?" recklessly; "Miss Warren said Mr. Bennet played a beautiful game and she said it was cards and that he was fond of it."