"I shan't go in." She stamped her foot for emphasis. "Run along, Timothy, if you're afraid. I'm going to stay. I love it!"
That implication of fear put him on his masculine mettle at once.
"I'm not afraid," he declared, stoutly. "It's just foolish, that's all. Come on, Arethusa."
She resented this tone of authority.
"No!" she said, most positively.
"Well, then ... I'll take you," announced Timothy, equally positive. "I just can't let you tempt Providence this way."
Her eyes blazed dark. "If you so much as dare touch me, Timothy Jarvis, even; I'll ... I'll...." Words failed her.
Timothy regarded her in helpless exasperation. Being very well acquainted with Arethusa and Arethusa's ways, he knew that she would have retaliated in some very real and immediate fashion, had he made a single move to carry out his threat. And nothing he could do along this line would have brought the going in any nearer, for in a scuffle she was quite as strong as he was.
They had been forced to converse in shouts in order to be heard above the noise of the storm through the swaying and bending trees, and the whole affair:—the loud argument which got nowhere, and the subsequent tableau of the girl and himself standing here under the big tree glaring at each other while the fury of the rain lashed against them and the storm dinned about them, suddenly struck Timothy as funny.
He laughed.