Timothy had found, besides his farmer's duties, another way to occupy himself this spring. It was an automobile of very recent acquisition, a long, dark, grey car of beauty. And nearly every night he raced past the front gate of the Farm in it, while Arethusa stood under the shadow of the clematis vine on the front porch and listened for the first low hum of its motor which carried so far ahead of it through the sleeping country, and watched to see its light come flashing up the Pike, drawing back hastily under the vine when it was close to the gate. Timothy had stopped once or twice and asked them all to ride, but he had never asked Arethusa alone. And since he did not ask her by herself, she was too proud to hop in beside him when Miss Letitia and Miss Eliza refused his invitation. If either one of them had gone, it would have been all right. But neither would.
No human power could have got Miss Letitia into it, and Miss Eliza considered it such a sinful waste of money when Timothy told her how much it had cost him, that she showed her great disapproval by declining to even sit in it.
But nearly every night it whizzed by on the way to town, and Arethusa watched for it in the shadow of the clematis vine.
Arethusa sighed deeply, and reached for "Jane Eyre," at the side of the rug.
It was a most abused and mistreated copy of this work, bearing her father's name on its fly leaf, which she had found on a recent rummaging through the garret. A glance through its pages had made her most anxious to read it. It seemed to be rich with sentiment and entertainment, of a truly Romantick nature.
She had read only as far as Jane's venture into the world of Mr. Rochester last night, when forced by the unfeeling Miss Eliza who viewed no printed matter as of such interest as to make for any forgetfulness of what one ought to do, with a stern call from the foot of the stairs, to "put out that light, and stop whatever it is you're reading this minute, and go straight to sleep!" Arethusa had wept bitterly over the cruelty of the early years; she hoped, this afternoon, to see Jane through to an uninterrupted conclusion of Perfect Happiness such as she so unmistakably deserved.
She read eagerly; her grey-green eyes following the lines of print without once lifting. Her only movement was the turning of the leaves, until a large and splashing drop of something fell plump on the page then open, and she wiped it off. But another fell, immediately after it; then another. It was Mandy's rain.
So Arethusa rose and gathered up her rug to start for the house. In her recently acquired submissiveness, the disobeying of Miss Eliza to stay out in a rain seemed to have no attraction.
But the storm broke with such quickness and fury, that Arethusa got no farther towards the house than a big oak a few yards away from the Hollow Tree. Underneath this, she crouched, covering her head with her arms. For the first time in her life she was frightened of a storm. But then, she never remembered having seen such a battle of the elements as this became, in the fewest possible moments. In fact, for years afterwards, folks in the neighborhood spoke of happenings as being just before, or just after, the "Big Storm."