"This is Miss Arethusa, Clay," said Ross, when the chauffeur jumped
down to open the door of the machine and took charge of the ancient
handbag.
Clay touched his cap respectfully.
But to the surprise of both men Arethusa's acknowledgement of this
introduction was a shy and old-fashioned courtesy Miss Letitia had
taught her. She murmured politely, "I'm very glad to meet you," and
extended her hand.
Clay very nearly dropped the handbag.
But something in the friendly smiling of the grey eyes that regarded
him made Clay himself to smile warmly in return, and Arethusa had made
a friend. He grasped the out-stretched fingers lightly, in the spirit
in which they had been offered, and said with unmistakable cordiality,
"I'm awfully glad you've come, Miss Arethusa. Home, Mr. Worthington?"
"Home," replied Ross, smiling at him for his kind quickness.
And then Clay slammed the door upon Ross and Arethusa and climbed up in
front. Arethusa was just a bit puzzled at first, and then she decided
it was the City.
She had had no previous dealings of intimacy with automobiles, the
nearest she had ever been to one was to watch them fly past down the
Pike. The word "chauffeur" would have conveyed no meaning to her mind,
nor have given her any idea of his place in the general scheme of
things connected with machines. She had thought the good-looking,
well-dressed youth in his natty Norfolk suit and cap was some friend of
her father's out for a ride with him, and so it was quite in order that
he should be introduced. People often took their friends driving in the
country. It was just a bit strange that he should do the driving and
not her father, but it did not bother her long; and after a while, she
was rather glad that the friend did sit in front.
She abandoned herself to Complete Happiness against those marvelously
soft cushions in the limousine. She dearly loved to ride, and she did
not get near enough of it at the Farm. In fact, motion of any sort had
a charm for Arethusa. But she had never felt motion so superlative as
this. It was even more exhilarating than the train had been, so swiftly
they moved forward, and so silently.
Her momentary shyness with her father began to disappear under the
influence of her enjoyment. She glanced around at him from under her
long lashes and found him watching her.
His daughter's appearance was proving interestingly mystifying to Ross.
Where in the world had she got that red hair and those wonderful Irish
eyes? She had not a single feature like her mother. Her tallness, he
thought, could be said to have come straight from him. And that
ever-changing play of expression across her face,--it was quite
fascinating.
Though thus watching her, from the moment they had sat down, Ross was
rather at a loss how to begin conversation; he had not entirely
recovered from that first embrace. But he could not help, however,
replying to her smile, the friendliest possible smile, with which she
conveyed to him her delight in the machine.
"So you like to ride?"
"I _love_ it!" she answered, enthusiastically. "This.... It's just
like flying!"
Ross liked this unbridled ecstasy; it was decidedly refreshing.
"Ever ridden in one before?"
Arethusa shook her head vigorously.
"But I should certainly have thought automobiles had penetrated to
Barnett County!"
"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.
But Arethusa could find no fault with it. She admired it unaffectedly
as they went up the walk toward it.
"Do you _live_ here, Father?" she asked, breathlessly. She had
considered at first the possibility that it might be a hotel. "It's so
awfully big! Why, Father, it's every bit as big as our County Court
House!" Which was till now the largest building she had ever seen.
She regarded the stately proportions of the facade with awe. Had she
not been with her father, she would never have found the courage to
lift that shining knocker in the center of the broad paneled door. She
would have gone on past this place, she was sure; it seemed so much too
large for the family of two she had come to visit.
Elinor's loving impatience had taken her to the library windows more
than once to watch for their coming. It seemed so long that Ross had
been gone. When the automobile was heard to stop, she rushed to the
front door to open it herself, flinging it wide as a hospitable
indication of how glad she was to welcome Arethusa. But with her hand
still on the door knob, she paused and drew back. This tall, slim
child, every bit as tall as she was herself, with her ardent grey eyes,
and that mass of tumbled red hair down her back, for Arethusa's various
exciting experiences had been hard for the coiffure with which she had
started from home, was not the girl Elinor had led herself to expect as
Ross's daughter. Arethusa, furthermore, was bareheaded, having
forgotten all about her hat and left it in the machine. This, as well
as the quaint costume of Miss Letitia's designing, added to Elinor's
little feeling of surprise.
And Arethusa stopped short also, just inside the door, and shyness
descended upon her once more with this, her first glimpse of the "new
wife."
But whatever Elinor's expression might be said to resemble, Arethusa's
in return after that first look was one of absolute and unalloyed
admiration. In her wildest flights of anticipatory imaginings as to the
appearance of her father's wife, founded on that Letter of his that had
so positively indicated her beauty, Arethusa had never been able to
paint such a picture as she actually saw. For Elinor's young brown
eyes, under her white hair, the lovely glow of her skin, and her
slender gracefulness clothed in that clinging, fascinatingly
smoky-colored gown she wore (a color she much affected), seemed to the
beauty worshipper who regarded her to make her the most Altogether
Beautiful Human Being that she, Arethusa, had ever gazed upon.
"Well," remarked Ross; he thought the funny little silence had lasted
quite long enough, "I hope you two will know each other the next time
you happen to meet anywhere!"
Then was Elinor given one of those same disarming smiles with which
Arethusa had won her father in the automobile, and anything else but
immediate and complete friendship was impossible after such a Smile,
however unlike the girl expected the one who had come might be.
Clay had brought in the forgotten hat when he came with the satchel,
and he hovered about in the background of the hall until he could
communicate to Ross that Miss Arethusa's trunk had not been attended
to. Should he go right straight back for it? Clay was somewhat used to
the remembering of things which Ross had not remembered; rarely a day
passed that he did not have to do something of this kind.
"My trunk!" Arethusa's mind made a complete somersault at this
intrusion of so commonplace an article into the happy family greetings
and the joy of finding Elinor as dear as she looked. "I ... I forgot
all about it!" she faltered.
"It doesn't matter," comforted Elinor, "there's no harm done at all.
Just give Clay the check and he'll go see about it!"
The _check_!
A wild search for it followed immediately. Arethusa had entirely
forgotten where it had been put. Down into the very depths of the
satchel she dived, to emerge unrewarded. Was it by any chance in that
lost purse?
Visions of Miss Eliza rose before her, making more frantic the efforts
to locate it. How many times had she said, "Whatever you do, Arethusa,
don't you dare lose that trunk check!"
She sank weakly to the floor to lean her head despairingly against the
heavy newel post of the stairway.
"What will Aunt 'Liza say?" she cried, with the hopelessness of one
already condemned. "Oh, what will she say?"
"It does not need even a clever mind like mine to deduce from my
daughter's behaviour that Miss Eliza remains unchanged through the
changing years," murmured Ross in Elinor's ear. "Tempus may fugit, but
Miss Eliza's disposition stands perfectly still."
Suddenly, Arethusa's hand flew to clasp her throat. She looked up at
them with a little laugh, her face clearing as if by magic.
"How awfully stupid of me! I remember now where it is!" She drew the
tiny bag on its cord out of the neck of her blouse. "She put it in
here, so I wouldn't lose it." Her relief was great and thoroughly
genuine. "Whee," she sighed, "just suppose I had lost it!"
It was all too much for Ross. He could scarcely manage to untie that
bag for the check, he was so hilarious.
"You needn't laugh that way," said Arethusa defensively. "You don't
know what Aunt 'Liza can be like when she's mad! If you did, you
wouldn't laugh!"
"But I do," he replied, "I do. That's the reason I laugh. It brings her
back to me so plainly."
It had brought her back to Arethusa very plainly also. She remembered
some Instructions Miss Eliza had given, which the time had come to
carry out.
"I must lie down and rest now," she said to Elinor.
"Are you very tired, dear? We'll go right up to your room."
"No, I'm really not a bit tired," explained Arethusa, as she scrambled
to her feet to start upstairs, "not the very weeniest bit. But Aunt
'Liza said I must lie down and rest just as soon as I got here."
Elinor looked a trifle puzzled. "But if you're really not tired...."
"But I must rest. Aunt 'Liza said so."
Arethusa was sure that she had disobeyed Miss Eliza enough for one day,
in the forgetting what she had said about strange men and the attitude
to be adopted towards them, and she had gone on from that to lose her
purse. There was no telling how long Miss Eliza's arm might be, how far
her wrath might reach. It was best not to tempt Providence.
She _would rest_.
"Wait," said Ross as an answer to his wife's bewilderment, "just wait
until you know Miss Eliza and all of this will be fully explained."