"Some people in town have them," Arethusa came quickly to the defence of her county, "but it's nobody I really know. Timothy was going to get one, but his silo blew down and he couldn't this summer; because he put up a concrete one in its place and it cost so much."
"Who is Timothy?"
"Why, Timothy is.... Why, Timothy.... He's just Timothy Jarvis ... Father." She added the "Father" a trifle shyly, it being the very first time she had ever addressed that title to him in person. "Aunt 'Liza wants me to marry him," she continued, as if that ought to explain matters perfectly.
Ross remembered the Jarvises. "I see, but how about you?" He found that shy little "Father" most attractive. He wished she would say it again.
Arethusa laughed. "Why, he's my very best friend and I've known him always and always. Of course I'm not going to marry him! I couldn't marry Timothy ... Father. You have to fall in love with the person you marry!"
"Then it seems I may gather from your remarks," and Ross was most highly entertained by those same remarks, "that you can't possibly fall in love with a person you've known always!"
"It doesn't ever happen in books," said Arethusa, seriously, "and they're supposed to be just like things really are, aren't they? I've read just oceans of love-stories. I just adore them!" she added, with emphasis.
Ross's smile broadened. "But truth, they say, is stranger than fiction," and he was about to add something to Arethusa's further mystification, when the automobile stopped.
It had stopped in front of a huge, brick house, painted grey, with tall, narrow windows indicative of the high ceilings within, and a high, pointed roof of grey and red slate. It was a house which had originally been much smaller, but it had been added to until it was spread out, all over a lot which was unusually wide for a city lot, with huge excrescences of wings on each side.
It was not a handsome house, and the most kindly intentioned critic could never have called it so. Elinor had never been able to do much towards the improvement of the outward appearance, however much she had beautified the interior. But it had been her home since she was too small to remember any other, and she loved it dearly despite its deficiencies from an artistic standpoint outwardly. Ross thought it a hideous pile. He said its only redeeming feature was that it so undoubtedly looked respectable.