The Heart of Arethusa Part 5

And the three on the back porch turned to see Miss Eliza regarding them grimly from the kitchen doorway.

Timothy gallantly removed his Jimmy hat and bowed, but Miss Eliza's expression did not soften in the least.

"I don't think she's hurt at all, Miss 'Liza," he said, with the worthy intent to soothe, "I found her in Miss 'Senath's Woods and brought her in."

"I can see she isn't," replied Miss Eliza.

Arethusa glared at Timothy for his statement of the situation.

"Arethusa," continued Miss Eliza, "I must say that I think this is going a little bit too far. You have almost made your Aunt 't.i.tia ill by running off in this storm. You know perfectly well just how they affect her. And I brought you into the house--once. You were certainly expected to stay. Sometimes you seem to me to be absolutely lacking in any finer sensibilities; especially in consideration for others. And you behave just like a child!"

"Oh, Miss 'Liza," interposed Timothy, "please don't jack Arethusa up so hard! I know she didn't mean to make Miss 't.i.tia ill. She loves a storm herself, so much, that she doesn't always remember that other people are afraid of them. But she did come in just as soon as she remembered it. She...."

"You needn't say all that stuff, Timothy Jarvis," interrupted Arethusa, angrily, "I reckon I can tell Aunt 'Liza anything I want, without you b.u.t.ting in. I'm sorry about Aunt 't.i.tia, Aunt 'Liza, I truly am, and I'll go right straight and tell her so; but...."

"That will do, Arethusa," interrupted Miss Eliza, in her turn. "Don't add rudeness to Timothy to the rest of your behaviour. And you've been told a number of times not to use that vulgar expression. Timothy is not a goat. But there is not the slightest use in my standing here arguing with you over your disobedience while you and Timothy are catching your death of cold. You'd better take off those wet shoes and go right up to your room and change the rest of your things--immediately.

Mandy will make you a hot lemonade. And I want it drunk this time. We won't take any risks from this escapade." (Arethusa hated hot lemonade.) "And, Timothy, you will stay to supper, of course. We are a household of women, and I have nothing to offer you as dry clothes except those old garments of Mr. Worthington's. But at least they are warm and dry, and will be better than what you have on. You just go on up to the west bed-room and I'll send them to you there."

"Timothy _shan't_ wear Father's clothes!"

"_Arethusa!_"

Arethusa toed the mark, although with a very bad grace.

"It wasn't me that invited you to supper, Timothy Jarvis," she announced, as a small measure of retaliation, "remember that, please!

And I don't want you, either!"

"I'm sorry," replied Timothy calmly, and his eyes danced, "because I'm going to stay. Miss 'Liza asked me. Mandy's going to have hot biscuit,--I see 'em; and Miss 'Liza'll get me out some of her strawberry preserves, I know."

Miss Eliza smiled indulgently at this request, and reached down into her leather pocket for the key to the preserve closet.

"You better make lots of biscuit, Mandy," continued Timothy; "I'm as hungry as a bear."

Arethusa sniffed disdainfully and, with her red head high in the air, started off down the pa.s.sage in the direction of the sitting-room.

"Where are you going?" called Miss Eliza after her.

"To tell Aunt 't.i.tia I'm sorry I scared her."

"Did you hear me tell you to take off your shoes and go straight to your room?" Miss Eliza's tone was awful.

Although Arethusa towered a good head and shoulders over Miss Eliza, she obeyed as meekly as the tiniest child. She returned to the kitchen to remove her shoes and then went down the side pa.s.sage to the boxed-in steps, Miss Eliza surveying her sternly all the while.

As Arethusa pa.s.sed Timothy on her way out of the kitchen, she leaned close to him and whispered, "I'll fix you for all this, Timothy Jarvis!

You just wait and see if I don't!"

It was hardly fair to blame Timothy for any of it, but if she had threatened to "fix" Miss Eliza total annihilation would have followed immediately. Yet overcharged feelings must be somehow relieved.

With the disappearance of her niece, Miss Eliza took occasion to apologize to the guest of the evening for any and all of her behaviour, which might have appeared unseemly. This proceeding so delighted Timothy he could hardly repress a whoop; for he well knew that nothing would make Arethusa so furious as to know her aunt had apologized (to him) for anything she had done.

One of the chief joys of Timothy's existence was teasing Arethusa.

What fun to tell her of this!

CHAPTER V

Miss Eliza presided with gentle dignity at the head of the supper table. She seemed to shed some of her militant spirit when seated before the white expanse of table-cloth on her own board. Hospitality was her pa.s.sion; nothing so thoroughly delighted her as a "guest in the home."

Mandy had made floating custard for dessert this evening, and when Miss Eliza helped it, she helped it with a deprecatory air, as though despite its superlative value as a custard which she very well knew, it really was not fit to be offered to a guest: it might do for just the family. Timothy ate as many as three meals every week of his life in this very dining-room, but not being a member of the immediate home circle, he came quite under the head of guests.

At the other end of the table Miss Let.i.tia carved the beautifully pink old ham into paper thin slices. She was still visibly nervous and her hands trembled a bit, every now and then (that storm had been a terrible experience); but such was habit with Miss Let.i.tia that not a single slice was a bit ragged or a sliver too thick.

Arethusa had paid Miss Let.i.tia a visit just before supper to make her peace, and Miss Let.i.tia had forgiven her, as she always did. And even had she suffered far more on the girl's account than she actually had, who could have resisted such pleading to be forgiven? Contrition had been so plainly visible in those grey-green eyes, and Arethusa had given so many kisses--soft and fleeting as thistledown they were, yet very satisfactory to Miss Let.i.tia as kisses--that it was quite impossible for Miss Let.i.tia not to believe in the perfect genuineness of Arethusa's apology.

She had promised fervently, "Never, so long as I live, to run out in a storm--ever again. Hope I may die right in my tracks if I do!"

While Miss Let.i.tia had deprecated the latter part of that promise as savoring slightly of sacrilege, she had accepted the first part in good faith; and experience should have taught her otherwise.

Miss Asenath had one whole side of the table to herself, her couch took up so much room. It was Blish's duty, generally, to wheel the couch across the hall from the sitting-room, but whenever Timothy stayed to meals, he took this office upon himself. And he took it with a gallantry and old-fashioned deference that brought a faint pink flush to Miss Asenath's soft old cheek. Timothy was a great favorite of hers.

He and Arethusa sat together on the other side; but Arethusa ignored him just as much as possible. Timothy took special delight in moving such dishes of eatables as were nearest him too far away from his neighbor for her to reach herself, so that she would be forced to ask him for them. She might have eaten her supper, and managed very well, without any of this food that Timothy had commandeered, had not one of those dishes been the plate of biscuit, an absolute necessity.

Miss Eliza's sharp eyes would certainly have noticed, had her niece helped herself to too many at a time, so poor Arethusa was most unpleasantly situated. And every request that she was forced to make for that plate of bread, for Timothy pretended every now and then not to hear the first time she asked, added to her fury with him.

But this continued warfare did not seem to affect Timothy's appet.i.te in the slightest. He consumed a most alarming quant.i.ty of biscuits and those strawberry preserves Miss Eliza had produced in his honor.

When he was receiving his third helping of ham, Arethusa leaned over close and whispered in his ear, but very, very softly, so that Miss Eliza would not hear her, "_Pig_!"

She also lost no single opportunity of conveying to him, though much more by expression than by actual word of mouth, how exceedingly ridiculous she thought he looked in his borrowed clothing. It was far too small for him in every possible way. Ross Worthington was a large man, but Timothy was even larger. He topped Arethusa, who was quite tall for a girl, by considerably more than half a head, and he was built all over in proportion.

When he was not covertly teasing his next-door neighbor, Timothy carried on a very polite conversation with Miss Eliza on sundry country matters. He complimented the stand of corn in the Redfield lot near that "V" lot of his own, and told her that it did not seem to show the need of rain so badly as did his corn; and Miss Eliza bridled at the compliment. She was proud of her ability as a farmer, and that the "Redfield Farm" could hold its own among the other farms in the county, even after all the male members of the family had been long gone to their reward, was due solely to Miss Eliza's indefatigable energy. She deserved the compliment; and any others of like tenor that Timothy might have given.

But she was modestly deprecatory, though her old eyes did shine, and her appreciation was written all over her. That had always been a wet piece of ground, said Miss Eliza; she hadn't been so sure corn would do at all well there. She was a bit surprised herself.

It was rather sad, remarked Timothy, after a bit, that this rain couldn't have come just two or three weeks sooner. He was afraid that some of their farmer friends had lost some money by the drought.

Miss Eliza agreed that it was sad. She specified one or two persons whose crops had not seemed to her to be quite up to the mark. And there was a field or two of her own which, if Timothy were to see, he would not compliment quite so highly; but this rain would work wonders in a great many places. It hadn't come altogether too late.

In a slight lull which followed Timothy's third helping to ham, Miss Let.i.tia asked Arethusa if she had brought her father's letter back to the house with her.

Arethusa's eyes shone immediately.

"Yes," she replied. Then she remembered, "No, I didn't either. I left it down in the Hollow Tree."