?" 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 o