LITMIR.BIZ

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shirt, and a blue coat adorned with brass buttons.

      Arethusa dearly loved all of this, the Romance and the Locket. She made it her special bit in the dressing of Miss Asenath every morning to hang the locket on its bit of ribbon and tie the tiny bow around Miss Asenath's frail neck.

      She often wondered just how it would seem when one was old to have been the Heroine of a Situation exactly like a story book. She pictured it as a dramatic scene of renunciation between the lovers, both satisfyingly well-favored—for Miss Asenath's beauty was a tradition and the boy in the locket was undeniably good to look upon—; and her natural inclination to romance was aided by the reading of many old-fashioned novels of unbridled sentimentality.

      Arethusa loved Miss Asenath herself even more than the Romance, though everyone loved her; no one could help it. Even Miss Eliza's crisp tones softened when she spoke to her.

      Arethusa plumped herself down on her special hassock right beside Miss Asenath's couch. It was a hassock with a wool-worked top of fearful reds and greens and yellows, which always stood just in that place so Arethusa could sit close to Miss Asenath. Miss Asenath smiled a welcome, and then with her slender fingers, so waxen white against the glowing color of the girl's hair, began plaiting up the loose red mass lest Miss Eliza should notice it and scold Arethusa for running about with her hair unbound.

      The room was stifling.

      Every window was closed tight, and the blinds drawn down, in addition, making a semi-darkness. For Miss Letitia was afraid of storms, thunder storms especially. At the very first distant rumble of thunder she always closed every opening in the house.

      She sat bolt upright in the centre of the room, her plump little person enthroned upon a leather pillow—lightning never struck through feathers—and her never idle fingers were busy crocheting a rose-colored afghan for Miss Asenath. Miss Letitia decidedly preferred steel needles both for crocheting and knitting, but steel was dangerous to use during a storm—it attracted lightning—, so her steel needles were all safe in the very bottom of her bureau drawer underneath her plain assortment of chemises and petticoats. And she had wheeled the sewing machine into the very farthest and darkest corner of the room.

      Miss Letitia was like nothing in the world so much as a ridiculously fat edition of Miss Eliza. But she lacked Miss Eliza's precision, and she could never, even with several conscientious trials, get her hair parted exactly in the middle. Arethusa sometimes on very special occasions parted it for her. Miss Eliza liked to see her sister as neat as herself. She liked Miss Letitia's apparel to have the same trim look as her own instead of the comfortably untidy appearance it did have.

      But, as Miss Letitia plaintively expressed it, when taken to task because she was not just so, "It's a great deal easier, Sister, to pin things down on a thin person, because there isn't any strain."

      Arethusa picked up the last copy of the Christian Observer, which was lying near Miss Asenath, and fanned herself vigorously. Her efforts to cool herself were so vigorous that in a very few moments she was wet with perspiration and much warmer than she had been before she started to fan. She felt as if she were about to suffocate in this close room after her glorious little run in the breath of the cold wind.

      "May I open a window, Aunt 'Titia," she begged, "Please, mayn't I? It's not storming yet, and, and, I'm so hot!"

      "Never open a window in a storm, 'Thusa. It's a very dangerous thing to do."

      Miss Letitia iooked at her great-niece just as severely as she knew how, though the severe effect she intended was somewhat marred by that perennial twinkle in her eyes and the rosy cloud in her lap below her round, rosy face. Such a setting made her look more like a grown-up cherub than anything else at the moment.

      The whole room, even with its closed blinds, was suddenly illuminated by a blinding glow, and a crashing roll of thunder followed immediately afterwards.

      Miss Letitia screamed.

      "Mercy on us! How awful! That was so near. Sister 'Liza, you'd better get a pillow! 'Thusa … !"

      Always, in a storm, one of Miss Letitia's first duties was to bulwark Miss Asenath who could not get pillows for herself, and so the latter was almost buried in them. Miss Asenath passed one of her many over to Arethusa, who sat on it obediently. Then the gentle creature on the couch rewarded her with a pat; by this conveying her loving intelligence of just how much the sitting on the hot, stuffy protection Miss Letitia insisted upon was hated, and her recognition of the magnanimity of doing so with murmuring. But it was Miss Asenath's way to make anything but good behaviour in her immediate vicinity well-nigh impossible.

      Next, she reached over and took the Christian Observer from Arethusa's hot grasp, and began herself to fan the overheated girl very slowly and quietly.

      "If you sit quite still, dear," she said softly, "you'll cool off in just a moment."

      Miss Eliza's sturdy uprightness disdained the "safety first" aid of pillows. She was a fatalist.

      "If I'm struck, then I'm struck," she said, with the finality that admits of no argument.

      Arethusa sat quietly on her hassock and under Miss Asenath's gentle regularity of fanning she cooled off gradually, but her impatience was in no wise abated. Father's letter was still undiscussed; and Arethusa wished that Miss Eliza would hurry and tell her about it, and what he had said. She seemed so very much longer than usual in getting started on what her niece considered the most burning question of the hour.

      She told Miss Letitia about the fall of the bird's nest which she had noticed on her trip to get Arethusa, and Miss Letitia agreed with her sister that it was a blessing that the wind had blown it down before it rained, else the gutter would surely have flooded again. They discussed with zeal the advisability of putting wire netting over the gutter end to keep those birds from re-building, and the length of time the storm was in actually coming. Miss Letitia ventured the prediction that it was to be a hard rain and she certainly hoped that Blish had remembered to put the barrels under that broken place in the north-east water spout to catch all the rain-water that was possible: and Miss Eliza replied with asperity that if he had not remembered it, he would find himself sorry. But she really considered it decidedly remiss in Jere Conway not to have fixed that spout weeks ago; she herself had told him about it on her last visit to town. Jere Conway was getting lazier and lazier as he got older and less attentive to business. Although she hated very much to employ a strange man, still if he put off much longer fixing that spout, she was going to send for the new tin-smith at the Junction.

      Finally, Arethusa felt that she could not stand all this irrelevancy another second; her impatient longing had to be expressed.

      "Please, Aunt 'Liza, what did Father say?"

      Miss Eliza dropped her glasses to the end of her nose.

      "You must learn to wait, Arethusa. You are much too impatient. Like your father."

      Miss Asenath's gentle voice interposed, "But why not tell her, Sister? Right now?"

      So Miss Eliza proceeded.

      "Your father," she announced, in a tone that plainly indicated her hearty disapproval of the whole affair, and plunging at once into the very middle of her subject, "has married again!"

      "Married again!" echoed Arethusa, uncertainly.

      The effect of her aunt's disclosure was as though some one had thrown a bulky object at her quite unexpectedly.

      "That's what I said, I believe. It's what I intended to say. Shut your mouth, child—you look half-witted with it open that way. I always did think he would. And I must confess I never thought he'd wait near as long as he has. Though I'm no great believer in second marriages, myself."

      "But, Aunt 'Liza. … "

      Miss Eliza frowned at the interruption.

      "Will you wait, Arethusa? Till I finish!"

      Arethusa might have retorted, and very properly, that nothing had been really begun as yet, by jumping into a middle without

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