Arethusa had proved an apt pupil to Timothy's friendly instructions when he had come home from college and passed on his acquirements in the art terpsichorean. The lessons had taken place in the central, biggest space in the barn, as she had said, with Timothy humming an accompaniment until breathless, and then she taking up the tune in her turn. This little taste of the joys of dancing had made her long for more. She failed to see how anything that made for such pure and unadulterated delight could be so wicked as Miss Eliza insisted that it was.
"I'm glad you know something about it," said Elinor, really relieved. "I was afraid perhaps you didn't, and you would hardly have the time to learn. And, Arethusa dearest," tactfully feeling her way, fearing to spoil the girl's innocent happiness in the garment, "was that white dress you wore last night your very best?"
"Yes, ma'am." The eager face lighted still more. "And it's the lowest necked dress I ever did have, and it has the shortest sleeves! They're nearly up to my elbow. Aunt 'Liza didn't want it made that way, so low, nor so thin, either; because she said I wouldn't be able to wear my underwear with it, and she's afraid it's dangerous for me to take it off. But I rolled it up last night and in at the neck, and it didn't show very much. Did it?"
Elinor and Ross were almost equally affected by this speech.
"Shades of the summer of seventy-six!" was his rather inappropriate exclamation.
And Elinor's expression seemed to Arethusa to be one of incredulity, so she turned back her shirtwaist cuff to prove her statement, and showed the end of a long, knit sleeve.
"I don't like to wear it a single bit," she said, "but Aunt 'Liza makes me. I have to put it on when we have the first heavy frost and I can't take it off until the tenth of May."
"I am becoming more and more convinced that Miss Eliza's peculiar talents are entirely lost in the place she occupies," replied Ross, with sincerity.
But the white dress, low as its proud owner seemed to consider it, and as thin, and in spite of Miss Letitia's loving effort expended on it for just such occasions as parties, would hardly serve for the Chestnuts' dinner-dance, thought Elinor.
And so, ere very much time were sped, Arethusa discovered Miss Asenath to have been a true prophet. She was to have another Party Frock. She and Elinor started off immediately to get It; but they had to get It ready-made, for there was not near enough time before the Party for a dressmaker's services to have accomplished the sort of Frock that Elinor wanted Arethusa to have.