And to see Timothy and Arethusa pick up the threads of her love-story where she had laid them down would almost have compensated Miss Asenath for living all these years with only memories.
Miss Asenath laid her hand on the locket at her throat, and fell to dreaming.
"Timothy," said Arethusa, half to herself, "Timothy and I get along just beautifully sometimes ... when he behaves. But he knows all the things I hate, and I think he does them just for spite to see me get mad. He says he likes to see me get mad, and I ... just like a goose, go right straight ahead and get mad for him. But I'll fix Timothy Jarvis yet for to-night! Just let him wait! If he thinks I'm going to let him ride all over me like that, he's mightily mistaken! Timothy Jarvis!!" with a most scornful emphasis, her voice rising.
Miss Asenath was conscious, although her thoughts were so very far away, of the vindictiveness of this ending, and smiled; Miss Eliza, catching Timothy's name through the sound of her own conversation, asked sharply:—
"What did you say about Timothy, Arethusa?"
Miss Eliza had a Wish also, but her Wish was quite often expressed; she had other ideas than Miss Asenath. She kept Arethusa fully cognizant of what her heart most earnestly desired.
"Nothing very much, Aunt 'Liza."
"Yes, you did. I heard you. Arethusa," Miss Eliza straightened her glasses and attacked directly, "the way you treated Timothy at the supper-table ... all through the meal.... It's beyond my comprehension how you can! But he was a gentleman through the whole thing, I must say, a perfect gentleman. Which ought to make you more than ever ashamed of yourself. Sometimes I'm forced to think that all the training your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath have given you has gone for naught. To treat a guest in your own home the way you did Timothy! I was scandalised!! Simply scandalized! But I must say that Timothy behaved like a gentleman."
It was what Timothy would have termed "dirt mean" of Miss Eliza to add this extra chapter to the thorough scolding for the afternoon which she had given Arethusa such a short while before. But Timothy was Miss Eliza's most vulnerable spot; one of her few weaknesses.
"He always does," muttered Arethusa, "according to you. But you don't hear anything he says, he's too smart!"