his was a most unusual performance for her. Her crochet
needle poised in mid-air.

"Sister," she pleaded, "please. I wouldn't ask the child such a
personal question, if I were you. Please!"

"Please what, 'Titia?" Miss Eliza was distracted for the fraction of a
moment to Miss Letitia. "Why do you sit there saying, 'Please,' in that
silly way? I will ask my niece Arethusa anything I wish. When I was
young we were supposed to answer all the questions of our elders,
personal or not, as you call them. Arethusa!"

When Miss Eliza spoke of "my niece Arethusa," it meant business. The
poor niece turned desperately, and just in time to receive the
broadside of a still more emphatic, "Arethusa!"

"Yes, I have, Aunt 'Liza. Timothy has asked me to marry him every
summer since I was five years old, and in between times too, and I've
said, 'No,' every single time. And if he keeps on asking me until I'm
five hundred years old, I'll still keep on saying, 'no!' I shall never,
never, marry Timothy!"

She left her refuge of the couch and started toward the door.

"I did not hear you asking permission to leave the room, Arethusa, and
I do wish you would not exaggerate so violently. It is simply telling
falsehoods. You told two in that one sentence. You know perfectly well
Timothy hasn't been asking you to marry him since he was nine--a child
of that age doesn't think of marriage. And you also know just as well
as I do that you'll not live to be five hundred, it's absurd to make
such statements. Come back here, Arethusa? Now what is your real reason
for acting this way whenever I speak to you of Timothy. I want to know?
You know just how your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath feel
about it. Why do you persist in going against our wishes?"

Arethusa gazed wildly around the room. She seemed to hunt on walls and
floor an answer to the uncompromisingly plain question. Close to the
door she was poised like some wild bird arrested in its flight. One
glance that included Miss Asenath and Miss Letitia absolved them both
from participation in the scheme so clear to Miss Eliza's heart.

"I don't love Timothy," she said, at last, desperately.

"Nonsense!"

"But I don't!"

"Bah!... Love!" Miss Eliza was thoroughly disgusted. "What do you want
to be so mawkish and sentimental for? Just like your father! You like
Timothy, don't you? Then that's quite enough."

"But I couldn't marry anybody I didn't love." The persecuted one edged
a l