With this calm assurance and assumption of superiority on Timothy's part, Arethusa's rage at him boiled over, openly, despite Miss Eliza's presence.
"Nobody asked your opinion, Timothy Jarvis, that I heard! And you know absolutely nothing whatever about what I'm going to do!"
"Oh, yes, but I do," he replied, still maddeningly superior, "I know...."
Arethusa fairly quivered in her fury.
"You do not," she interrupted, in flat contradiction. "I'm going there to live. And if you want to know just why, Timothy Jarvis, it's because then I shan't ever have to lay eyes on you again!"
"Arethusa!" from Miss Eliza.
Whereat Arethusa, retaining some small remnants of the instinct for self-preservation, subsided, though her eyes still blazed with honest anger directed at Timothy. And when Miss Eliza's attention was distracted elsewhere for a brief moment, she seized the occasion to whisper to him; "Don't you dare stay a minute after supper, Timothy; don't you dare! I'll go right straight to bed if you do!"
"Which wouldn't harm me at all, if you did," he whispered pleasantly in reply, "just yourself. And Miss 'Liza wouldn't let you do it anyway, even if I stayed and you wanted to. She'd say it was rude, and you know it. But don't worry; keep your shirt on," he added, most inelegantly, "I've got something else to do, so I'm going right on home." Then, very meanly, for it was taking a rather unfair advantage, as Miss Eliza's gimlet eyes were just then boring right through Arethusa to prevent any outburst of suitable venom from her, "And, take it from me, Arethusa, you won't stay long in Lewisburg."
He escaped to Miss Asenath's side to wheel the couch back into the sitting-room, as Miss Eliza had risen just as he finished that last speech and signified that supper was over. Arethusa remained seated for a moment, speechless with wrath, and with that helpless, cheated feeling she always experienced when the last word was Timothy's.
The rain had stopped, so the guest departed with immediacy for home, wearing his borrowed clothing and carrying his own under his arm, much to Arethusa's further ire. She considered that he might just as well have changed before he left, for his own things had got perfectly dry by the roaring kitchen stove.