The Heart of Arethusa Part 6

"It happened to be _my_ letter," said Miss Eliza, drily.

"I know, but it won't be hurt. I can get it tomorrow. It'll keep perfectly safe and dry. And, oh Aunt 'Liza, please let me go now! He said just as soon as I could get ready. Please don't make me wait 'til fall! Please!"

"Go where?" enquired Timothy.

Arethusa pretended that she had not heard him. Miss Eliza, however, answered.

"Ross Worthington has married again, Timothy, and come back to America.

He wants Arethusa to come make him a visit."

Timothy dropped the biscuit he was holding halfway to his mouth.

"Since I was a yellow pup!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed feelingly.

"You still are one," Arethusa remarked sweetly for him alone; but Timothy magnanimously allowed this interpolation to pa.s.s without retaliation.

"He married an American, thank heaven," continued Miss Eliza, "married her over there somewhere. In Italy, I think he said. She seems to be well-off. It was she sent the money to Arethusa for the visit."

Timothy picked up his biscuit, in his agitation he reb.u.t.tered it extravagantly on top of b.u.t.ter already there, and resumed operations.

"Well," he said, between mouthfuls, "this is certainly some bunch of news to hand a fellow all of a sudden. Arethusa's father married!

That's enough by itself for a starter!" For to the twenty-two year old mind of Timothy, Ross Worthington seemed far too aged for anything like matrimony. "But wanting Arethusa to come visit him! You going to let her go, Miss Liza?"

"Of course she is!" burst from Arethusa, indignantly.

"Sister 't.i.tia and I and Sister 'Senath," replied Miss Eliza to Timothy's question, as calmly as if Arethusa had not opened her mouth, "have decided to let her go in the fall. Though I must say I'm not sure it's wise to let her go at all. I never did think it was a very good place for girls, or boys, either, for that matter, the city. Still, Arethusa's never been and a little visit might not do her any harm.

After all, he's her father when you get right down, and I reckon he won't let anything happen to his own flesh and blood."

"No," agreed Timothy, with becoming gravity, although his blue eyes danced merrily, "I don't suppose he would. What city is it, Miss 'Liza?"

"He don't say. It's just like him. But the envelope was post-marked 'Lewisburg,' so I reckon it's pretty safe to say that's where he is.

I'm glad it's in the State. I wouldn't want Arethusa traveling too far."

Arethusa was irritated beyond her always slight endurance by this little discussion of her and her affairs, carried on so much as if she were not present. She plunged suddenly into the conversation without any invitation.

"I'm not going just to visit," she announced, flatly, "I'm going to Live. Father didn't say just 'visit.'"

This created all the stir she could have wished; a chorus of outcry from Miss Eliza and Miss Let.i.tia and Timothy. Only Miss Asenath smiled.

Arethusa pushed her chair back from the table and surveyed them all defiantly.

"I reckon I can go live with my own father!"

"Of course not," snapped Miss Eliza; "you _live_ here!"

"Of course you do," affirmed Timothy; "it's perfectly foolish to talk of living any place else but here, Arethusa. And even if you do go make your father a visit, you won't stay very long. I know. You see, I've been there and I know what it's like, and I know you, too, Arethusa; so I know very well you won't want to stay!"

With this calm a.s.surance and a.s.sumption of superiority on Timothy's part, Arethusa's rage at him boiled over, openly, despite Miss Eliza's presence.

"n.o.body asked your opinion, Timothy Jarvis, that I heard! And you know absolutely nothing whatever about what I'm going to do!"

"Oh, yes, but I do," he replied, still maddeningly superior, "I know...."

Arethusa fairly quivered in her fury.

"You do _not_," she interrupted, in flat contradiction. "I'm going there to _live_. And if you want to know just why, Timothy Jarvis, it's because then I shan't ever have to lay eyes on you again!"

"_Arethusa_!" from Miss Eliza.

Whereat Arethusa, retaining some small remnants of the instinct for self-preservation, subsided, though her eyes still blazed with honest anger directed at Timothy. And when Miss Eliza's attention was distracted elsewhere for a brief moment, she seized the occasion to whisper to him; "Don't you dare stay a minute after supper, Timothy; don't you dare! I'll go right straight to bed if you do!"

"Which wouldn't harm me at all, if you did," he whispered pleasantly in reply, "just yourself. And Miss 'Liza wouldn't let you do it anyway, even if I stayed and you wanted to. She'd say it was rude, and you know it. But don't worry; keep your s.h.i.+rt on," he added, most inelegantly, "I've got something else to do, so I'm going right on home." Then, very meanly, for it was taking a rather unfair advantage, as Miss Eliza's gimlet eyes were just then boring right through Arethusa to prevent any outburst of suitable venom from her, "And, take it from me, Arethusa, you won't stay long in Lewisburg."

He escaped to Miss Asenath's side to wheel the couch back into the sitting-room, as Miss Eliza had risen just as he finished that last speech and signified that supper was over. Arethusa remained seated for a moment, speechless with wrath, and with that helpless, cheated feeling she always experienced when the last word was Timothy's.

The rain had stopped, so the guest departed with immediacy for home, wearing his borrowed clothing and carrying his own under his arm, much to Arethusa's further ire. She considered that he might just as well have changed before he left, for his own things had got perfectly dry by the roaring kitchen stove.

Then came the lecture for her niece which had been steadily gathering momentum with Miss Eliza for some little time. But Arethusa sat on the end of Miss Asenath's couch, to hold her hand, and did not mind it quite so much. Besides, in the depths of her conscience, she was guiltily aware of rather deserving it.

After the atmosphere had cleared, conversation once more veered around to the Letter, and the aunts sat in solemn consultation over it and the proposed visit and Arethusa.

CHAPTER VI

One of the most agitating parts of this whole affair was the actual traveling that must be done by Arethusa in order to reach her father.

Miss Eliza's first idea was to find out if anyone in the County would be making a trip to the City this fall and to place her niece under that person's protection; provided that person was of the irreproachable character she deemed requisite before being entrusted with such a charge.

Miss Let.i.tia then ventured to mention, most timidly, the State Fair, which was held in Lewisburg every September. Some one of the county's agricultural population would most surely be going there then.

Perhaps Timothy, answered Miss Eliza, graciously conceding Miss Let.i.tia a stroke of real mentality in her suggestion. If he was planning to attend, it would be just the thing; the girl could go with him. She was sorry she had not broached the subject at supper.

But Arethusa vehemently opposed this idea. She would not go a single step with Timothy. And why could she not go alone, anyway? She was quite large enough, and she was all of eighteen this summer.

This very radical departure from the established order of things raised a storm of protest immediately from Miss Let.i.tia and Miss Eliza; Miss Eliza especially. Such was not to be considered for a moment! An absolutely unprotected female traveling alone! And a young female at that!

"No," said Miss Eliza, firmly.

If the worst came to the worst, and it could not possibly be managed any other way, she would go with Arethusa herself, rather than have her make that four hour trip totally unattended; at which presented alternative Arethusa's mobile face clouded over most completely. This was a much worse prospect than Timothy.

Miss Eliza and Miss Let.i.tia suggested and counter-suggested, and then rejected everything. No one idea seemed altogether to suit.

Now all this commotion over the trip and Arethusa's making it alone was really not so uncalled-for when one realized all the circ.u.mstances.

She had never been on a railroad train; never having spent longer than a portion of a day away from the Farm in all of her eighteen years, nor slept, even for one night, under any other roof.

The family did their shopping in "Blue Spring," five miles away down the Pike, only by courtesy a town. It was a "town" of six hundred inhabitants, including babes in arms and counting very carefully. On two most memorable occasions Arethusa had visited the county-seat, twelve miles farther on, on the same Pike (for Blue Spring had preempted a portion of the State road as its Main street); and these were occasions truly never to be forgotten. For there ran the railroad, through the heart of the town; there were electric lights and paved streets; the little place in its aping of a city gave her glimpses of a world of fascinating bustle and confusion. To Arethusa, the county-seat seemed bewilderingly active and alive.