The Heart of Arethusa Part 19

But Arethusa could find no fault with it. She admired it unaffectedly as they went up the walk toward it.

"Do you _live_ here, Father?" she asked, breathlessly. She had considered at first the possibility that it might be a hotel. "It's so awfully big! Why, Father, it's every bit as big as our County Court House!" Which was till now the largest building she had ever seen.

She regarded the stately proportions of the facade with awe. Had she not been with her father, she would never have found the courage to lift that s.h.i.+ning knocker in the center of the broad paneled door. She would have gone on past this place, she was sure; it seemed so much too large for the family of two she had come to visit.

Elinor's loving impatience had taken her to the library windows more than once to watch for their coming. It seemed so long that Ross had been gone. When the automobile was heard to stop, she rushed to the front door to open it herself, flinging it wide as a hospitable indication of how glad she was to welcome Arethusa. But with her hand still on the door k.n.o.b, she paused and drew back. This tall, slim child, every bit as tall as she was herself, with her ardent grey eyes, and that ma.s.s of tumbled red hair down her back, for Arethusa's various exciting experiences had been hard for the coiffure with which she had started from home, was not the girl Elinor had led herself to expect as Ross's daughter. Arethusa, furthermore, was bareheaded, having forgotten all about her hat and left it in the machine. This, as well as the quaint costume of Miss Let.i.tia's designing, added to Elinor's little feeling of surprise.

And Arethusa stopped short also, just inside the door, and shyness descended upon her once more with this, her first glimpse of the "new wife."

But whatever Elinor's expression might be said to resemble, Arethusa's in return after that first look was one of absolute and unalloyed admiration. In her wildest flights of antic.i.p.atory imaginings as to the appearance of her father's wife, founded on that Letter of his that had so positively indicated her beauty, Arethusa had never been able to paint such a picture as she actually saw. For Elinor's young brown eyes, under her white hair, the lovely glow of her skin, and her slender gracefulness clothed in that clinging, fascinatingly smoky-colored gown she wore (a color she much affected), seemed to the beauty wors.h.i.+pper who regarded her to make her the most Altogether Beautiful Human Being that she, Arethusa, had ever gazed upon.

"Well," remarked Ross; he thought the funny little silence had lasted quite long enough, "I hope you two will know each other the next time you happen to meet anywhere!"

Then was Elinor given one of those same disarming smiles with which Arethusa had won her father in the automobile, and anything else but immediate and complete friends.h.i.+p was impossible after such a Smile, however unlike the girl expected the one who had come might be.

Clay had brought in the forgotten hat when he came with the satchel, and he hovered about in the background of the hall until he could communicate to Ross that Miss Arethusa's trunk had not been attended to. Should he go right straight back for it? Clay was somewhat used to the remembering of things which Ross had not remembered; rarely a day pa.s.sed that he did not have to do something of this kind.

"My trunk!" Arethusa's mind made a complete somersault at this intrusion of so commonplace an article into the happy family greetings and the joy of finding Elinor as dear as she looked. "I ... I forgot all about it!" she faltered.

"It doesn't matter," comforted Elinor, "there's no harm done at all.

Just give Clay the check and he'll go see about it!"

The _check_!

A wild search for it followed immediately. Arethusa had entirely forgotten where it had been put. Down into the very depths of the satchel she dived, to emerge unrewarded. Was it by any chance in that lost purse?

Visions of Miss Eliza rose before her, making more frantic the efforts to locate it. How many times had she said, "Whatever you do, Arethusa, don't you dare lose that trunk check!"

She sank weakly to the floor to lean her head despairingly against the heavy newel post of the stairway.

"What will Aunt 'Liza say?" she cried, with the hopelessness of one already condemned. "Oh, what will she say?"

"It does not need even a clever mind like mine to deduce from my daughter's behaviour that Miss Eliza remains unchanged through the changing years," murmured Ross in Elinor's ear. "Tempus may fugit, but Miss Eliza's disposition stands perfectly still."

Suddenly, Arethusa's hand flew to clasp her throat. She looked up at them with a little laugh, her face clearing as if by magic.

"How awfully stupid of me! I remember now where it is!" She drew the tiny bag on its cord out of the neck of her blouse. "She put it in here, so I wouldn't lose it." Her relief was great and thoroughly genuine. "Whee," she sighed, "just suppose I had lost it!"

It was all too much for Ross. He could scarcely manage to untie that bag for the check, he was so hilarious.

"You needn't laugh that way," said Arethusa defensively. "You don't know what Aunt 'Liza can be like when she's mad! If you did, you wouldn't laugh!"

"But I do," he replied, "I do. That's the reason I laugh. It brings her back to me so plainly."

It had brought her back to Arethusa very plainly also. She remembered some Instructions Miss Eliza had given, which the time had come to carry out.

"I must lie down and rest now," she said to Elinor.

"Are you very tired, dear? We'll go right up to your room."

"No, I'm really not a bit tired," explained Arethusa, as she scrambled to her feet to start upstairs, "not the very weeniest bit. But Aunt 'Liza said I must lie down and rest just as soon as I got here."

Elinor looked a trifle puzzled. "But if you're really not tired...."

"But I must rest. Aunt 'Liza said so."

Arethusa was sure that she had disobeyed Miss Eliza enough for one day, in the forgetting what she had said about strange men and the att.i.tude to be adopted towards them, and she had gone on from that to lose her purse. There was no telling how long Miss Eliza's arm might be, how far her wrath might reach. It was best not to tempt Providence.

She _would rest_.

"Wait," said Ross as an answer to his wife's bewilderment, "just wait until you know Miss Eliza and all of this will be fully explained."

CHAPTER XIII

A reward of some description was surely due Miss Eliza's niece for her behaviour on this occasion, for no creature ever felt less like even the outward semblance of "resting" than did Arethusa. While regard for the strictest truth will not permit it to be stated that much rest was obtained from her method of carrying out Miss Eliza's command; still, she remained in her room with every appearance of obedience and intervals were spent on the "squshy" green sofa, when she could have talked and talked to Ross and Elinor the entire afternoon without the slightest hint of fatigue.

Arethusa's delight in her room more than repaid Elinor for any trouble which the fixing of it might have been. Her little gasping "Oh!" when the door was first opened, and the silent, s.h.i.+ning-eyed gaze around afterwards were the most genuine and appreciated tribute of admiration she could have given.

She would never have dreamed that the mere gathering together of furniture and pictures and other objects of familiar names which were the commonplaces of everyday life at the Farm could present an appearance so beautiful. When once on the sofa, tucked under a fluffy green coverlid by Elinor's kind hands, she could not stay for long. A hundred times did she bob up to examine various fascinating objects that attracted her attention as her eager regard explored while she lay there, "resting."

The bath-room delighted her beyond any power of her expression. It was a far more wonderful piece of work as a bath-room than the one at Timothy's house which she had deeply envied him ever since it had been put in. That hot and cold water should run together for one's cleansing without the trouble of fetching them in heavy buckets from a far-away kitchen, had seemed to Arethusa the acme of luxury when she had first glimpsed the new bath-room at Timothy's.

There was but one faucet at the Farm, and that was in the kitchen, by the sink. Miss Eliza had made this one concession to modernity because she could not help but see that it saved a lot of bother in very cold weather. The plumbing arrangements, however, were of the most primitive. She scorned the suggestion that a bath-room be added; an effete idea.

Arethusa made up her mind immediately to write Timothy of the glories of her was.h.i.+ng paraphernalia as being far superior to his. It was so far superior, in fact, that there were things in that region of white tile and flas.h.i.+ng nickel whose specific use she failed to see. There was nothing just like it at Timothy's.

She decided also, after a rather longer interval than usual spent on the sofa, to take a bath this very afternoon; now, before supper time.

But the dainty little silver clock on her mantel was chiming half-past six before she had finished her toilet; she had spent so long and luxurious a time in that wonderful porcelain tub. And there was so much to be admired all around her.

Her hair, to her great sorrow, she could not make stay up on top of her head at all, and she was forced to leave it plaited down her back as of old. She was vaguely dissatisfied with the youthful look it gave her, so arranged, but it could not be helped. She had lost most of her hairpins when it had tumbled down, and Miss Eliza had provided but the one set.

She wondered why there had been no call of "Arethusa!" as when she was late to supper at the Farm; for she must be late, very late. Six o'clock was the supper hour at home. She hastily slipped on the skirt to the blue suit and the pongee waist, without stopping to bother with anything in her trunk, which had been opened and placed in her room for her. How dreadful to be so late to her first meal!

Arethusa fairly plunged down the front stairs, but once at the bottom, she paused uncertainly. She had no idea where the dining-room was. Then she heard voices not far away and she followed the sound into the library, where she found Ross and Elinor in front of a gloriously burning wood fire. But they were both garbed in what to her inexperienced eyes seemed the most p.r.o.nounced party garments. Ross had donned a Tuxedo and pinned a tiny, pink rose in his b.u.t.tonhole. Elinor wore a black gown that was very low in the neck to Arethusa, although in reality it was the most modest of decolletage, and a few of the same pink roses were cl.u.s.tered at her belt.

"I was so afraid I was late," began Arethusa breathlessly, then she stopped short, halfway across the room, when she fully realized the costuming of the pair before the fire.

"Oh, you all are giving a Party and I didn't know anything about it!"

she exclaimed.

Ross raised himself just a trifle from the comfortable depths of his chair. "Are you quite rested?" he enquired gravely.

But she scarcely heard that he spoke. "Oh, I just wish I'd known it was a Party!" she repeated. "I wish I'd known!" She glanced down at the plainness of her own attire and then at Elinor's simple evening frock.