The Heart of Arethusa

by Frances Barton Fox

She would have pursued the subject further, had not Miss Asenath, with gentle diplomacy, interrupted such pursuit. She did not feel as if she could listen to Miss Eliza and Arethusa wrangle over Timothy when the child had just barely got home, after being away so long.

But Arethusa would not have wrangled. She could not have wrangled with Miss Eliza over anything in the world, much less Timothy. She wondered who those girls in town were that he was going to see; Timothy had always declared very emphatically his dislike of the town girls. But she wondered to herself, without asking anybody any questions.

Miss Eliza's sharp eyes watched her niece. She noticed those unusual dark circles under Arethusa's eyes, circles which most certainly were not there when the girl went away; and this strange quietness with which she had come back to them Miss Eliza did not like a bit. The tongue of the Arethusa of three months ago would have gone like a bell clapper under circumstances such as these. And Miss Eliza, who for all her sharp manner and her scolding tongue, loved her niece in her own way as much as either Miss Asenath or Miss Letitia, suddenly wished that she had not let Arethusa make her visit to Lewisburg. She left the sitting-room abruptly and bustled out to the back door to find Blish, whom she scolded most vigorously, much to his astonishment and consternation, for he could not remember a thing he had done or left undone within the last twenty-four hours, since the last scolding, to be scolded for.

Mandy had prepared such a supper for the Arethusa come back to them as not even that much vaunted feast of the prodigal son, for all its fatted calf, could equal. All of Arethusa's favorite dishes were on the table, and it had been set with the company china. Then Mandy and Blish and Nathan, also, came in a group to the door of the dining-room and peeped in with good-natured dark faces stretched wide in brilliant smiling, just to see her eat a few mouthfuls. They were so glad to have her back at the Farm.

Arethusa choked up several times with all the homely kindnesses she received. These dear people who loved her so, how much sweeter they were to her than she at all deserved!

Immediately after supper, Miss Eliza made her niece go to bed. And Arethusa went with such meekness and so altogether unprotesting, that Miss Eliza trotted along up to her room with her, and felt anxiously of her forehead for fever. She was quite positive now that the girl was sick! She bustled around and helped Arethusa undress. She tucked her tightly into the little wooden bed with its turned posts which had always been Arethusa's very own, covering her clear up to her chin with the blue and white squared "counterpin" Miss Letitia had made as a surprise for Arethusa when she should come home. Then Miss Eliza blew out the lamp, efficiently with one blow as always, bade Arethusa peremptorily to go right straight to sleep, and left her. But very unexpectedly, she came back after shutting the door, and trotted briskly across the dark room to give Arethusa a quick little peck on one cheek, which was Miss Eliza's only way of kissing, and to tell her very gruffly that she was awfully glad Arethusa was at home again, and she certainly hoped that she'd have sense enough to stay. Then she once more bade her niece to go straight to sleep and once more departed.

But Arethusa could not go to sleep. She threw back the carefully tucked in covers and got up out of bed, draping the new "counterpin" around her shoulders, and paddled, bare-footed, over to that window of her room which looked in the direction of Timothy's house. It was velvety black over on that horizon, but Arethusa could find the place where the house ought to be. It was a very beautiful night, cold and clear and starry. Arethusa put her head down on the window-sill and gazed up at the stars. There were millions of them, and they all seemed to be winking straight down at her just as sympathetically as possible. She had always loved stars.

As she watched them, a sort of mist began obscuring them from her, and so she brushed at her eyes to wipe it away, but it only seemed to keep on growing to be more decided as a mist; and then it dissolved itself into tears which fell thick and fast, hot tears which splashed on the window-sill ... all because of Timothy's treatment of her on this home-coming afternoon. Arethusa felt as if Timothy's friendship were lost to her forever. Shamed and humiliated by Mr. Bennet, it had remained for life in its cruelty to add this last blow. For unless his feeling for her was absolutely changed, he would never have treated her like this. Arethusa knew Timothy too well.

He had read Mr. Bennet correctly, she remembered now, thinking about her best friend; or about the one who had always, till so recently, been her best friend. He had called Mr. Bennet a "four-flusher." Would that she had not been so blinded in her infatuation as not to heed this warning! She could recall a great many times when Timothy had been proved right in his deductions, which surely ought to have made her place more value on the one concerning Mr. Bennet than she had.

Arethusa felt, just then, as if she would even rather that Miss Eliza should know of that Episode at the January Cotillion than that Timothy should know about it. Timothy's good opinion of her, suddenly, seemed to Arethusa to possess a great charm.