xt72542j6x2j https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72542j6x2j/data/mets.xml Fox, Frances Barton, 1887-1967. 1918  books b92-213-30910698 English Small, Maynard and Co., : Boston : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Read, F. W. Heart of Arethusa  / by Frances Barton Fox ; with a frontispiece by F.W. Read. text Heart of Arethusa  / by Frances Barton Fox ; with a frontispiece by F.W. Read. 1918 2002 true xt72542j6x2j section xt72542j6x2j 


















THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

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ARETH USA



W

N

 



            THE

HEART OF ARETHUSA




              BY



FRANCES BARTON



FOX



WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY
F. W. READ



          BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND
         PUBLISHERS



COMPANY

 

















          Copyright, 1918
By SMALL, MAYNARD  COMPANY
           (INCORPORATED)

 
























                       TO
         GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN
Who found me young; full ignorant of the trade
To which my soul aspired. So it was she made,
With friendly kindness of a generous heart,
Some of her busy hours to know still worthier aim;
Seeing that I learned a trifle of the writing game.
And in what I've written, she has had her part.

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THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

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    THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

                   CHAPTER I
  At the end or a long, straight avenue of symmetrj.y
cally developed water maple trees (the trunks of all the
trees whitewashed to precisely the same height from the
ground) the house gleamed creamy-white, directly fac-
ing the Pike. Its broad front door came exactly within
the middle distance of this vista of maples, as though
the long-ago builder had known that Miss Eliza's or-
derly soul would have suffered much unhappiness had
it swerved a fraction from the centre and, looking for-
ward to the time when she should rule at the Farm, had
planned it all to save her the trouble of a change. Miss
Eliza would have been sorely tempted to move either
the house or the avenue, had not the front door been so
placed as to be viewed from the exact middle of that
avenue; such was her passion for neatness and pre-
cision.
  And there was not a weed nor a ragged-looking
patch of grass in the whole length of the brown dirt
road between those evenly grown maples; nor a weed
nor a ragged-looking patch of grass in the whole of the
front yard, enclosed in its white board fence with the
one flat board laid all around the top.
  This was a board whose position and height from
the ground had always made it irresistible to Arethusa.
It had been one of the chief delights of an active child-
                         I

 



THE HEART OF ARETHIUSA



hood and adolescence to walk it as far as possible be-
fore falling off. The day she had negotiated the entire
fence without once losing her balance, to return in tri-
umph to the stile where Timothy awaited her, marked
an epoch in her development; for it was the last strong-
hold of Timothy's achievements, as should properly
distinguish the boy from the girl, which had thus far
held out against her. And it was quite a long way
around the top of that fence; the yard was large.
  Tnere was no gate into the yard. Those who came
to call at the Farm on wheels stopped their vehicle at
the end of the avenue outside, by the worn hitching-
post with its iron chain and ring, and climbed an old-
fashioned stile right from the carriage-block to a
straight walk of bricks, laid in a queer criss-cross pat-
tern, that led up to the house.
  It was a low-built house, wide-flung, the eaves com-
ing close down over the second-story windows; and one
might almost have stepped from the windows of the
first floor directly out on to the flagged wvalk that ran
along the whole front. It had a curious appearance
of having grown where it was. One could imagine,
without very much effort, that it had not been built as
were other houses, but had grown up gradually like
some queer sort of solid plant.
  The pillars of the small front porch were covered
thick with a white clematis in. full bloom, the pride of
Miss Eliza's heart: and well might she be proud. for
no other clematis for miles around ever bloomed so
profusely or so largely. Flowers nodded gayly in the
smallest of formal gardens at one end of the house and
honeysuckle vines clambered over frames by the sum-
mer-house sheltering the cistern at the other end; but
both vines and flowers climbed and nodded in the most



2

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



orderly manner, for they were all Mliss Eliza's plants.
  The house was painted every other spring, painted
this creamy-white, and it always seemed a cleaner white
than any other white house in the country, no matter
if those others were painted just as often. The out-
side shutters to the twinkling square-paned windows
were green, a rich, dark green, that had not been
changed since time began for the Farm. On the sec-
ond day of Nlay every other year (unless that day fell
on Sunday) John Gibson drove out from town and
began painting at the Farm.  If it rained, he painted
inside the porches first; but he put one coat of paint all
over everything paintable before he was through. He
always stayed out at the Farm until his work was done,
and then he drove back to town again, to wait until the
then two-years' distant second day of May should bring
him back.
  And everything that was done on the Farm was done
in just such well-grooved ruts of habit.

  It had been unbearably hot and close all day long.
  The brazen, hard-blue sky had seemed to be pressing
a blanket of thick, humid air closer and closer to the
earth as if bent upon the suffocation of everything
living. Everybody at the Farm had been sure it was
brewing a storm. They had hoped a good rainstorm;
and now. . . . It was almost come.
  Down on the horizon the clouds were piling up in
great black and dark grey masses, with here and there
a lighter grey that showed ominously against its
darker background; cloud masses shot through every
now and then with an angry-looking red or orange flash
that was immediately answered by a low rumble of ever
nearing thunder.



3

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



  The wind had risen, after this gasping day without
a breath of air stirring anywhere, and now it blew re-
freshingly cold and clear almost directly from the
north.
  It flattened the long parched grass in the yard. It
danced the leaves on the trees about so gayly and so
madly as they turned their more prominently veined
sides to view  (which Arethusa knew was almost a
sure indication of rain), it did not seem possible their
slender stems could hold them to the bending and twist-
ing branches.  Indeed, some of them could not hold on
and the wind gathered these up and carried them along
with bits of twigs and grass to pile up in the fence cor-
ners and wait for that sorely needed drink of water
there. A garden chair in front of the house rocked
violently as though some restless ghost were occupying
it and then overturned with a crash. The dust gath-
ered up in the brown dirt road in great swirls and
whirled away like miniature cyclone-clouds in their
funnel shape towards the Pike to meet other swirls
of a lighter dust and go whirling still farther away,
until the wind grew tired of such sport and dropped
them. The birds' nest in the north cornice which Miss
Eliza had been after for weeks blew down, and the
straw and bits of feathers were scattered all over the
yard; but only to be caught again by the wind and
carried on somewhere else. The green shutters on the
house swung out on their fastenings as far as they
could and then banged back against the house with a
tiny crash of sound.
  There seemed nothing that the wind overlooked.
Even the clouds, as they piled higher and higher and
blacker and blacker, had the appearance of being driven
by the wind, nearer and nearer the Farm.



4

 




         THE HEART OF ARETHUSA                  5

  Arethusa ran out of the front door and down the
long, flagged walk towards the quince bushes, far at
the very end of the yard, to meet the storm. She held
out her arms to the wind and drank in great deep
breaths of its refreshing coolness.  It tossed her skirts
about her and blew the great rope of coppery red hair
which ordinarily hung loosely plaited down her back
so that it streamed straight out behind her just like a
candle flame.
  Of all the things that happened with which she was
acquainted, Arethusa loved best a thunder-storm.  She
felt no slightest tinge of fear; to be out of doors in the
wind and rain with thunder crashing and rolling and
great flashes of lightning splitting wide the heavens,
every now and then, left nothing to be desired towards
the perfection of the situation.  She had sometimes
fancied, after an unusually wide and vivid flash, that
she had really been able to see a wee bit of a way into
that Heavenly City which she had been taught was
high above her, behind all that sky, in the blinding
brightness.
  But ArethUsa's aunts had altogether different ideas,
not one of them (save perhaps Nliss Asenath, some-
what) understanding in the least this strange and illog-
ical desire to watch the play of the elements out of
doors when she could be safe inside a house.  It was
always their very first move, when a storm was threat-
ened, to bid her remain indoors.
  To-day though, so far, the gods had seemed to be
with her; she had escaped without being seen. And if
her luck continued to hold, she might get clear away to
Miss Asenath's Woods before her Aunt 'Liza caught
her and haled her back. For they had not had such

 



THE HEART OF ARET1 HLUSA



a glorious storm as this would be, if its promise were
made good, for months and months.
  There was a flash of lightning that seemed to play all
about the girl running swiftly down the walk; a crash
of thunder that seemed to make every window pane
in the house rattle in echo, and a few, big, splashing
drops of rain fell.
  Arethusa stretched her arms high and stood on tip-
toe to meet them. She shook her hair loose from its
plait and threw back her head, loving it all - the wind
and the dark sky and the tense feeling of readiness for
the storm with which everything seemed charged
with an almost pagan joy. She even began a dance,
a fantastic sort of lonely quadrille (if it could be given
any special name), there on the flagged walk by the
end of the house.
  ' 'Thusa ! "
  The call came very faint and far away.
  Then -" 'Thusa I
  Louder this time, and much nearer, but Arethusa
heeded it not if she heard; her dance continued uninter-
rupted. She swayed like a tall lily to the wind, with a
few little steps one way and then a few little steps the
other; holding out her cotton skirts; her hair blown all
about her like a great, red cloud. There was some-
thing elfin, something wild and woodsy, in her manner
of dancing; the nymph whose name she bore might so
have welcomed a storm in her woods of ancient Greece.
  Then - " A -r - e-thusa! "
  And Mfiss Eliza Redfield's own energetic little per-
son, as trig and trim as a tiny ship with all sails closely
reefed, even in this boisterous wind, bore down upon
her niece. Miss Eliza's grey crown of glory, parted
in the middle with precision and to the exactitude of a



6

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



hair, was totally unruffled and remained drawn down
across her forehead in smooth, satiny bands of an even-
ness and rigidity which no other hair, save Miss
Eliza's, could possibly have.
  She pushed her shiny glasses to the end of her sharp,
little nose and over them surveyed the disheveled
maiden before her.
  " What are you doing " she asked crisply.
  Arethusa turned her glowing face to her aunt, but
without pausing in her dance. "Oh, this glorious
storm, Aunt 'Liza! I . .
  Miss Eliza waved her hand. "You need not an-
swer. I can see quite plainly, for myself, it is some-
thing foolish.  You should not be out here.  Come on
into the house, ArethUsa. Your Aunt 'Titia and I and
your Aunt 'Senath wish to talk to you. In the sitting-
room."
    Oh, not right now, Aunt 'Liza, please!  Can't

  "No, you can't.  Come on into the house. How
many times do you have to be told a thing, Arethusa
You know very well how much your Aunt 'Titia objects
to your running around in a storm in this outlandish
way! "
  " Oh, but Aunt 'Liza, it's not storming yet. Just
thundering a little," pleaded Arethusa.  " Please let
me stay out until it really begins.  Please ! I'll come
right in then.  I promise.  Please!
  " Arethusa! "
  And this effectually nipped in the bud Arethusa's
faint little effort to have her own way.
  But it would have been nipped effectually sooner or
later, for no one ever dreamed of standing up for long
against Miss Eliza, or of being so rash as to contem-



7

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



plate such as actual disobedience. Although her stat-
ure was that of a child and her figure slight in propor-
tion, she concentrated as much energy and leadership
in those four feet eleven inches, as if the figures had
been reversed.
  Blish, the negro boy who did all the hardest and
heaviest work around the house, inside and out, and
who stood six feet three in his stockings, hung his head
abjectly as before an offended Goliath when his diminu-
tive mistress scolded him for a task she considered
slightingly performed. Blish had an honest and in-
grained terror of Mliss Eliza's wrath and the lashings
she could give with her tongue: and he was not alone
among those on the Farm in this terror.
  So Arethusa abandoned her dance and, with her hair
still hanging, meekly followed Miss Eliza towards the
front door.
  "We have had a letter from your father," began
Miss Eliza, as this strange Indian-file procession of
very tiny old lady and very tall young girl proceeded
back along the flagged walk on which it had issued forth
in distinct sections such a short while before.
  " Oh!" Arethusa lunged forward and grabbed
Miss Eliza around her neck. " When, Aunt 'Liza
When    This morning   What did he say Why
didn't you tell me  Did he say anything for me  Oh,
Aunt 'Liza, what did he say "
  These staccato questions were poured forth as fast
as it is possible for human lips to utter words.
  Miss Eliza extricated herself from the embrace with-
out interrupting her progress.
  " We considered it best, your Aunt 'Titia and I and
your Aunt 'Senath," (She never spoke of herself and
Arethusa's other great-aunts in any different way or



8

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



order, and why, no one could tell) " to discuss it thor-
oughly among ourselves before we said anything to you
about it. It was a very unexpected letter; almost a
shock, I might say, the contents. It came yesterday
afternoon.  I wish, Arethusa, that you would learn
not to be so violent. You could have asked me about
it without nearly strangling me."
   Every fibre of Arethusa's body quivered with impa-
tience. What little self-control she had, and Miss
Eliza would have named it none at all, was only man-
aged with the greatest difficulty. Behind her aunt's
leadership she proceeded with little hops and skips.
Her tongue burned with all the rest of those questions
she was so longing to ask.
   A Letter from Father in the house ever since yester-
day afternoon, and she had not even seen it! It was
the one time in weeks that she had not gone down to
the mail-box for the mail! So it always happened!
  Suddenly Miss Eliza turned.
  " You make me so nervous, Arethusa, jumping up
and down that way behind me, I could scream!  Can't
you walk! " Then she added, half to herself and
rather irrelevantly too, considering the gist of the fore-
going conversation.  " I must say that I question very
strongly the wisdom of Sister 'Titia's decision."
  All decisions were, nine cases out of ten, wholly
Miss Eliza's; but in conversation responsibility for
them was generally shifted to Miss Letitia.
  Arethusa made a noble effort to compose herself
and did her very utmost to walk as she had been
requested.
  From long experience of her aunt, she knew it would
do no earthly good to ask a single one of those ques-
tions she so desired to have answered.  Miss Eliza



9

 



10     THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

told a person all that was necessary when she was quite
ready for it, herself, and without the least regard as
to the state of feverish impatience to which such a pro-
ceeding might bring a petitioner. And very often,
Arethusa had also discovered, questioning delayed the
wished-for loosening of Miss Eliza's tongue.


 










CHAPTER II



   Miss Eliza paused to shut the front door carefully
behind them, latching it against the storm; and Are-
thusa ran on ahead into the sitting-room at one end of
the big, square hall, a " dog-trot " hall which went
straight through the centre of the house from front
porch to back porch.
  This place known as the " sitting-room " was a non-
descript apartment crowded with furniture of varied
sorts, till every available space was occupied by some-
thing. It was too crowded to be really pleasing when
one entered it for the first time and yet it possessed
certain and unmistakable charm; which was a charm
Miss Asenath may have given. Her couch dominated
everything, drawn across between the two south win-
dows. But whatever it was, one undoubtedly had a
feeling of something about the sitting-room which
made it lovable after being in it the shortest possible
time.
  The furniture which made it seem crowded ran from
a new and shiny sewing-machine of very recent pur-
chase, through some pieces belonging unmistakably to
the period of temperamentally carved walnut of a
generation or so ago, back to the plain wood and simple
lines of Colonial days. Miss Eliza's high old secre-
tary, placed to get the best possible light for her slightly
near-sighted eyes which she obstinately refused to ad-
mit were anything but perfect in their vision, was of
the last description. The secretary stood open always,
                         It

 



12   THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



and was of a consistently immaculate order. The neat
little piles of papers and account-books in the various
pigeon-holes were arranged so precisely they looked as
if they had never been touched since first put in their
places, and yet the owner spent many industrious mo-
ments, nearly every day, working with them. The
piano, which sat almost directly opposite the secretary,
was of a trifle later construction. It was large and
square, of inlaid rosewood, with handsomely carved
legs, and had mother-of-pearl keys faintly tinged with
brown all around their edges. From    end to end,
lengthwise of its top, was a long narrow piece of dark
red satin decorated with bunches of tall cat-tails heavily
painted in oils. Scattered music lay all over the piano,
on the music-rack, sliding down on the keys, and in
small, untidy piles hastily placed on the red satin cover.
Its scattered condition was conclusive evidence that
Arethusa had been handling it, for she was the only
person on the place who ever scattered anything about
so untidily. There was a wicker sewing-basket in the
room, Miss Letitia's property.  And a large and
pompous what-not of black walnut, elaborately and
fantastically carved, guarded the corner nearest the
door, bearing as its piece de resistance a bunch of wax
flowers under a glass case, flowers shaped by Miss
Asenath's gentle fingers a great many years ago; one or
two shells wearing landscapes in oils -of colors and
tints never yet seen in an actual landscape - also rem-
iniscent of Miss Asenath's artistic girlhood; and sev-
eral other non-utilitarian objects of varying degrees of
beauty, according to the personal taste of the beholder.
A much larger shell than those on the what-not, with
a landscape containing a cow and other objects no doubt
intended as human, propped open the door into the hall.

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



A white marble clock, with a large piece of white coral
lying on its top and under a glass case like the wax
flowers, ticked away on the high mantel in the digni-
fied and quiet way which befitted a clock belonging to
the Redfields. And there were many other pieces of
furniture and bits of old-fashioned ornament in the
room.
  The various generations and the lives which each
one had lived at the Farm might almost be known by
observation of these things in the sitting-room. Each
generation and its occupations had seemed to leave be-
hind it an imprint in furniture and ornament.
  But had the sitting-room not been a room of rather
unusual dimensions, it could never have held all of the
diversified objects gathered in it. And they were gath-
ered in it of real necessity, for all the life of the house
centered about Miss Asenath, and in this room she spent
her whole waking time. Miss Asenath had not left the
couch between the two south windows for over fifty
years, except to be lifted from it to her bed at night
and back to it again in the morning for another day.
  She was as tinv as Miss Eli7a, but even thinner, and
her delicate features made her profile seem like a
deliciously tinted cameo against the faded tan of the
sitting-room wall. She had an abundance of soft white
hair that waved like a fleecy cloud about her face.
Her skin was white and waxen clear; her loose gown
was of woolly material, white and spotless; the pillows
piled all around her were all in immaculate white cases:
and though her lips still held a faded rose and her eyes
gleamed dark, the only real spot of color anywhere
immediately about her was a fluffy wool afghan of a
heaven-like shade of deep blue spread across the lower
part of her helpless body.



I3

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



  Miss Asenath loved all that had color: the gold of
sunlight across the sitting-room floor; the green of the
grass and the waxen-leaved coral honeysuckle just out-
side the sitting-room windows; she even loved the wax
flowers because they were so gay. But Miss Letitia
loved just as dearly to dress her all in white to match
her hair and skin (Miss Letitia was the seamstress for
the whole family) ; so there was a compromise. Miss
Asenath wore the soft white gowns of Miss Letitia's
making and, with Miss Letitia's own connivance, in-
dulged her fancy for colors in her afghans, which she
had in every conceivable shade.
  Long ago, Miss Asenath had had a Romance.
  She had always been the acknowledged beauty of the
family in her Dresden china loveliness, and she had
been little more than a child when love had come to her
in all the wonder and ecstacy of loving that belongs to
youth. But a fall from her riding horse had left her
pinned to this couch, never to walk again, so she had
sent her boy-lover away.
  And although she had known him grow old and had
watched him live a full life apart from hers (a life
actually ended only a very few years ago), she had
seemed to see him always as the boy belonging to her
girlhood, to those months she had claimed him as her
own. She wore his picture in a locket at her throat
hung on a piece of ribbon the color of the afghan for
that day. It was a miniature of a smiling boy with
waving blonde hair brushed high above his forehead
in an unmistakable roll, with eyes of a very deep shade
of blue, and dressed in a high stock and much be-ruffled
shirt, and a blue coat adorned with brass buttons.
  Arethusa dearly loved all of this, the Romance and
the Locket. She made it her special bit in the dressing



14

 



THIE HEART OF ARETHIUSA



of Miss Asenath every morning to hang the locket on
its bit of ribbon and tie the tiny bow around Miss
Asenath's frail neck.
  She often wondered just how it would seem when one
was old to have been the Heroine of a Situation ex-
actly like a story book. She pictured it as a dramatic
scene of renunciation between the lovers, both satisfy-
ingly xvell-favored - for Miss Asenath's beauty was a
tradition and the boy in the locket was undeniably good
to look upon-; and her natural inclination to romance
was aided by the reading of many old-fashioned novels
of unbridled sentimentality.
  Arethusa loved Miss Asenath herself even more than
the Romance, though everyone loved her; no one could
help it. Even -Miss Eliza's crisp tones softened when
she spoke to her.

  Arethusa plumped herself down on her special has-
sock right beside Miss Asenath's couch. It was a has-
sock with a wool-worked top of fearful reds and greens
and yellows, which always stood just in that place so
Arethusa could sit close to Miss Asenath. Miss Ase-
nath smiled a welcome, and then with her slender fin-
gers, so waxen white against the glowing color of the
girl's hair, began plaiting up the loose red mass lest
Miss Eliza should notice it and scold Arethusa for run-
ning about with her hair unbound.
  The room was stifling.
  Every window was closed tight, and the blinds drawn
down, in addition, making a semi-darkness. For Miss
Letitia was afraid of storms, thunder storms especially.
At the very first distant rumble of thunder she always
closed every opening in the house.
  She sat bolt upright in the centre of the room, her



I 5

 



i6   THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



plump little person enthroned upon a feather pillow-
lightning never struck through feathers -and her
never idle fingers were busy crocheting a rose-colored
afghan for Miss Asenath.  Miss Letitia decidedly pre-
ferred steel needles both for crocheting and knitting,
but steel was dangerous to use during a storm - it at-
tracted lightning -, so her steel needles were all safe
in the very bottom of her bureau drawer underneath
her plain assortment of chemises and petticoats. And
she had wheeled the sewing machine into the very
farthest and darkest corner of the room.
  Miss Letitia was like nothing in the world so much as
a ridiculously fat edition of Miss Fliza.  But she
lacked Miss Eliza's precision, and she could never,
even with several conscientious trials, get her hair
parted exactly in the middle. Arethusa sometimes on
very special occasions parted it for her. I\Jiss Eliza
liked to see her sister as neat as herself.  She liked
Miss Letitia's apparel to have the same trim look as
her own instead of the comfortably untidy appearance
it did have.
  But, as Miss Letitia plaintively expressed it, when
taken to task because she was not just so, " It's a great
,deal easier, Sister, to pin things down on a thin per-
son, because there isn't any strain."
  Arethusa picked up the last copy of the Christian
Observer, which was lying near Miss Asenath, and
fanned herself vigorously.  Her efforts to cool herself
were so vigorous that in a very few moments she was
wet with perspiration and much warmer than she had
been before she started to fan.  She felt as if she were
about to suffocate in this close room after her glorious
little run in the breath of the cold wind.
  "I May I open a window, Aunt 'Titia," she begged,

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



"Please, mayn't I  It's not storming yet, and, and,
I'm so hot! "
  " Never open a window in a storm, 'Thusa. It's
a very dangerous thing to do."
  Miss Letitia looked at her great-niece just as se-
verely as she knew how, though the severe effect she
intended was somewhat marred by that perennial
twinkle in her eyes and the rosy cloud in her lap below
her round, rosy face. Such a setting made her look
more like a grown-up cherub than anything else at the
moment.
  The whole room, even with its closed blinds, was
suddenly illuminated by a blinding glow, and a crashing
roll of thunder followed immediately afterwards.
  Miss Letitia screamed.
  " Mercy on us! How awful! That was so
near. Sister 'Liza, you'd  better get a pillow !
'Thusa. .. ! "
  Always, in a storm, one of Miss Letitia's first duties
was to bulwark Miss Asenath who could not get pil-
lows for herself, and so the latter was almost buried
in them. Miss Asenath passed one of her many over
to Arethusa, who sat on it obediently. Then the gentle
creature on the couch rewarded her with a pat; by this
conveying her loving intelligence of just how much the
sitting on the hot, stuffy protection Miss Letitia in-
sisted upon was hated, and her recognition of the mag-
nanimity of doing so with murmuring. But it was
Miss Asenath's way to make anything but good be-
haviour in her immediate vicinity well-nigh impossi-
ble.
  Next, she reached over and took the Christian Ob-
server from Arethusa's hot grasp, and began herself to
fan the overheated girl very slowly and quietly.



I 7

 



I 8  THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



  " If you sit quite still, dear," she said softly, " you'll
cool off in just a moment."
  Miss Eliza's sturdy uprightness disdained   the
  safety first " aid of pillows. She was a fatalist.
  " If I'm struck, then I'm struck," she said, with the
finality that admits of no argument.
  Arethusa sat quietly on her hassock and under Miss
Asenath's gentle regularity of fanning she cooled off
gradually, but her impatience was in no wise abated.
Father's letter was still undiscussed; and Arethusa
wished that Miss Eliza would hurry and tell her about
it, and what he had said. She seemed so very much
longer than usual in getting started on what her niece
considered the most burning question of the hour.
  She told Miss Letitia about the fall of the bird's nest
which she had noticed on her trip to get Arethusa, and
Miss Letitia agreed with her sister that it was a blessing
that the wind had blown it down before it rained, else
the gutter would surely have flooded again. They
discussed with zeal the advisability of putting wire
netting over the gutter end to keep those birds from
re-building, and the length of time the storm was in
actually coming. Miss Letitia ventured the prediction
that it was to be a hard rain and she certainly hoped
that Blish had remembered to put the barrels under that
broken place in the north-east water spout to catch all
the rain-water that was possible; and Miss Eliza re-
plied with asperity that if he had not remembered it,
he would find himself sorry. But she really considered
it decidedly remiss in Jere Conway not to have fixed that
spout weeks ago; she herself had told him about it on
her last visit to town. Jere Conway was getting lazier
and lazier as he got older and less attentive to business.
Although she hated very much to employ a strange

 



THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



man, still if he put off much longer fixing that spout,
she was going to send for the new tin-smith at the
Junction.
  Finally, Arethusa felt that she could not stand all
this irrelevancy another second; her impatient longing
had to be expressed.
  " Please, Aunt 'Liza, what did Father say"
  Miss Eliza dropped her glasses to the end of her
nose.
  " You must learn to wait, Arethusa. You are much
too impatient. Like your father."
  Miss Asenath's gentle voice interposed, " But why
not tell her, Sister  Right now"
  So Miss Eliza proceeded.
  " Your father," she announced, in a tone that
plainly indicated her hearty disapproval of the whole
affair, and plunging at once into the very middle of her
subject, " has married again!
  " q"arried again! " echoed Arethusa, uncertainly.
  The effect of her aunt's disclosure was as though
some one had thrown a bulky object at her quite unex-
pectedly.
  "That's what I said, I believe. It's what I in-
tended to say. Shut your mouth, child,- you look
half-witted with it open that way. I always did think
he would. And I must confess I never thought he'd
wait near as long as he has. Though I'm no great
believer in second marriages, myself."
  " But, Aunt 'Liza . .
  Miss Eliza frowned at the interruption.
  "W Will you wait, Arethusa Till I finish!
  Arethusa might have retorted, and very properly,
that nothing had been really begun as yet, by jumping
into a middle without preamble. But then, Miss Eliza



19

 



20 THE HEART OF ARETHUSA



had her own most individual way of doing everything,
even to telling of the contents of important letters.
  " When I have finished, you may read his letter for
yourself. His new wife," she crowded a quantity of
scorn into those two words, " wants you to come visit
them. He says she does. They both do. She has
sent. . ."
  Arethusa sprang, starry-eyed, from her hassock.
Her hands flew, clasped, up to her heart to hold its
beating down.
  " To Europe   Oh, Aunt 'Liz a!"
  " Will you wait!!  I must say! To Europe, in-
deed! He's in America! "
  And then Arethusa gave such a shriek of joy that it
echoed through and through the house.  MIandy, in
the kitchen, looked inquiringly at Blish as it penetrated
there.