So Miss Asenath patted the place at her side invitingly. Arethusa cuddled up very close; Miss Eliza went back to the beginning of her article, having read a paragraph or two; and peace began to reign with the very first word of the reading aloud.
When Miss Eliza's voice, with all the proper inflections, had followed the various whys and wherefores of the death of Servetus to a triumphant conclusion, she was a different person. All the sharpness aroused by Arethusa's seeming scorn of Timothy had disappeared. She was even ready to say, when her niece stooped to kiss her good-night, that she was sorry if she had made her unhappy in her manner of discussing Timothy, and Timothy's matrimonial possibilities; and this was a very great concession for Miss Eliza.
"But you are making a great big mistake, Arethusa," she could not help adding, "every way, in not taking Timothy while you can."
Yet it was amiably said, and did not cause the slightest excitement.
Which goes but to prove more surely that Miss Asenath seemed to have missed her calling.
CHAPTER VII
"That was such a pretty girl that just went past us, Ross."
Elinor Worthington's smiling glance followed the girl far down the deck.
For the creature was so deliciously young, everything about her; her slenderness; the joyful way she swung when she walked; even the cut of her clothes spelled youth. And she was undeniably pretty, with eyes like bits of blue sky and quantities of silky, corn-colored hair. Her mouth was almost too large, but even that could not spoil the essential prettiness of her. She was laughing at her escort, with glowing upturned face, as they swept past Elinor and Ross in their quiet corner, and her laugh displayed an unusually straight row of the whitest teeth imaginable.