e said it."

Timothy gathered a handful of small stones lying near him and began to
idly skip them one by one across the Branch. It was an accomplishment
which Arethusa deeply envied him: her stones invariably fell in without
skipping. Yet she made no move to show him that she saw how beautifully
every single stone that Timothy skipped sped across the top of the
water to the other side. Miss Johnson came and sat down between them,
worn out in her vain search for her stick, and she panted and gazed
inquiringly from one to the other of her playmates, so unusually
silent.

"I don't see why," said Timothy suddenly, "that you want to act this
way, Arethusa. I've said I was sorry. That ought to be quite enough;
and ... and.... Anyway, I don't see why one kiss should make you so
mad."

"Oh, you don't?" replied Arethusa, very sarcastically.

Life had seemed a gloomy affair to Timothy since the day he had
realized that Arethusa was actually going on this Visit. He did not
want her to go, to put it very plainly. Not that he thought she would
not have a good time; he thought she would have a good time; in fact,
he thought she would have far too good a time, his verbal expression to
Arethusa of the contrary idea, notwithstanding. Timothy had made more
than one visit to Lewisburg; he was well acquainted with the variety of
its attractions. He could not help but vision the oceans of beings of
the opposite sex it was inevitable she should meet, and he saw in these
meetings his own eclipse as a suitor.

Timothy's Ardent Wish for Arethusa and himself was identical with Miss
Asenath's Secret Hope and Miss Eliza's Openly Expressed Desire. And
Arethusa had not exaggerated in the least, to Miss Eliza, the number of
his proposals. He had been proposing to her every summer with worthy
persistence since he was nine or ten, childish though those first
proposals may have been; and sometimes twice a summer.

Ever since that time when she had made the first appeal to his chivalry
when he had met her, a chubby little scrap of only three scant summers,
wandering off down the Pike, every little footfall taking her farther
and farther away from the Farm, and she had raised her eyes, brimming
over with tears in their wonderful tangle of black lashes, and said,
with a tiny catch in her voice, "I'm losted. Tate me home, Boy!"; and
he, with the superior knowledge of location which seven years gives
over three, had led her safely back to Miss Eliza-