"Stop laughing!" screamed Arethusa, angrily.
"I can't help it! You—you look so perfectly funny!" Timothy's mirth pealed forth again.
Arethusa's hair hung about her face in long, wet locks; her eyes, in her white face, were like great, dark pools of wrath; and she had spread her arms out behind her against the tree as if she had gripped it to hold should Timothy attempt force to make her leave her stronghold.
"You look just like a drowned rat, yourself!" she exclaimed furiously. "And—and you've got a whole pond in your Jimmy!"
So Timothy took off his big Jimmy hat and shook the pool of rain water out of the curved brim.
Had she not been so angry with him, Arethusa might have likened him then to a young river god instead of a "drowned rat," and the comparison would have fitted much better. And with his blonde head, which the dampness had merely made to wave a little more, for his thickly plaited straw hat had somewhat protected it from a thorough wetting, she might even have called him a young Viking, without any very great misuse of metaphor; Timothy was so thoroughly of the outdoors in his appearance, with all his youthful strength.
His deep blue eyes gleamed with determination as plainly as the grey eyes opposite him gleamed with anger, for Timothy meant that Arethusa should go into the house; and that without much more delay.
But he changed his tactics to accomplish this. Although he was nothing of a weather prophet, he displayed, at times, wisdom rather beyond his years.
"Arethusa, do be reasonable, now," he said, in the most friendly of coaxing tones. "Suppose that tree should be struck; you'd be killed. I would too."
"That wouldn't make very much difference," she replied, naughtily.