How could she have been so cruel as to say such a thing and hurt dear Aunt 'Senath's feelings? With a rush she was across the room and both strong young arms had clasped the frail figure of the best-loved aunt closely to her.
"Oh, Aunt 'Senath, Aunt 'Senath!" she sobbed, wildly penitent. "I was a beast! I didn't think! Your Timothy was a lovely name!"
It sounded a trifle illogical and inconsistent, but Miss Asenath seemed to understand perfectly. She whispered her forgiveness to the weeping Arethusa, who could only squeeze her and murmur incoherent avowals of her lack of intent to be unkind. To be unkind to Aunt 'Titia was bad enough, but to be unkind to Aunt 'Senath! It was the last word in perfidy.
"It all depends on what we think of the person, what we may think of the name, Arethusa, dear," said Miss Asenath. "I know you didn't mean it."
And Arethusa wept some more, scalding tears of still another sort of penitence: Aunt 'Senath was such a darling! The back of Miss Asenath's woolly white wrapper was rapidly getting damper and damper.
Such scenes as the one just past generally ended in just this way, with Arethusa's tears; and the tears nearly always cleared the air. Miss Eliza took up the Christian Observer once more, and Miss Letitia resumed her rosy crocheting, after raveling out almost a whole row which she had put in as wrong as was possible.
"If I were you, Arethusa," remarked Miss Eliza drily, after awhile, looking up from her magazine to bend her sharp glance on the pair on the sofa, "I would not crush my aunt into jelly in order to show her your sorrow at being so thoughtless and unfeeling. And you will make her quite ill; very likely it will bring on one of her bad headaches, if you carry on much longer that way."
Miss Asenath's headaches were periods of much anxiety for all the family, with the great suffering they brought the gentle invalid. Arethusa drew away from the couch abruptly. She felt suddenly overwhelmed with her inability ever to do the right thing; a feeling which Miss Eliza was quite often successful in arousing in her niece.
Miss Asenath offered her own cobwebby handkerchief to dry Arethusa's reddened eyes. Then she asked Miss Eliza if she would not be good enough to read aloud to them for awhile. Miss Asenath had some of the makings of a diplomat.
None of the roomful of women would really listen, for Miss Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza herself would be made beatific. She considered herself somewhat gifted as an elocutionist; during her course at the old Freeport Seminary, now so long ago, she had had the most lady-like of instruction. She prided herself on her ability to put "expression" into her reading. Thus would amiability be especially restored in her quarter, and poor, persecuted Arethusa might have a little while in which to attain some degree of calmness once more.