-ever since that
long-past day, Arethusa had made up the most of Timothy's world. They
had played together all through childhood and boyhood and girlhood, and
quarreled violently and much over their play, and then made up with
commendable immediacy; Timothy was the nearest approach to a brother
Arethusa had ever known. But Timothy's feeling for Arethusa had ever
been, and especially these last few years, more than a brother's love.
It was the clean whole-hearted affection which a boy gives to the one
girl in the world who seems to him superior to other girls. Even when
Timothy had gone away to a neighboring town to college, his allegiance
had never for a moment been shaken; in all those four long years he had
never seen a single maiden, among the many he had met, who came
anywhere near Arethusa in his estimation.

Timothy had had some dim idea that it might be quite wise to get her
safely promised to himself before she went away. The last point-blank
refusal she had made him, earlier in this summer, had not left him
altogether disheartened. He knew Arethusa was given to moods. Then,
too, persistence often wins the reluctant; dripping water wears away a
stone. There are a great many aphorisms dealing directly with such a
state of mind as Timothy's.

So the evening just before this hot September morning, he had dressed
himself in his very best and strolled over to the Farm, fully
determined on a definite course of action.

He had made his formal proposal for Arethusa's hand to Arethusa
herself, as they sat side by side on the top step of the worn stone
steps to the front porch. But she had laughed at him, so derisively,
that Timothy, goaded into rashness by the laughter, had kissed her with
a resounding smack. Then he had been slapped by the indignant Arethusa
until his check stung with the pain, sent straight home and told never
to come back again as long as he lived.

And he had wondered, as he cut across the fields, a chastened and a
sadder Timothy under the friendly stars which winked so sympathetically,
and rubbing his still stinging cheek as he walked, if there would ever
be anybody who would understand Arethusa. He didn't. He could recall
occasions when he had kissed her and had not been slapped.

Now Miss Eliza had unfortunately heard the conversation and the
kiss and the slap and the dismissal of Timothy, from inside the
sitting-room; and she had called Arethusa into her after the rejected
suitor had fled a