XIII
XI XXIV
XII XV
XIII

THE HEART OF ARETHUSA

CHAPTER I

At the end of a long, straight avenue of symmetrically developed water
maple trees (the trunks of all the trees whitewashed to precisely the
same height from the ground) the house gleamed creamy-white, directly
facing the Pike. Its broad front door came exactly within the middle
distance of this vista of maples, as though the long-ago builder had
known that Miss Eliza's orderly soul would have suffered much
unhappiness had it swerved a fraction from the centre and, looking
forward to the time when she should rule at the Farm, had planned it
all to save her the trouble of a change. Miss Eliza would have been
sorely tempted to move either the house or the avenue, had not the
front door been so placed as to be viewed from the exact middle of that
avenue; such was her passion for neatness and precision.

And there was not a weed nor a ragged-looking patch of grass in the
whole length of the brown dirt road between those evenly grown maples;
nor a weed nor a ragged-looking patch of grass in the whole of the
front yard, enclosed in its white board fence with the one flat board
laid all around the top.

This was a board whose position and height from the ground had always
made it irresistible to Arethusa. It had been one of the chief delights
of an active childhood and adolescence to walk it as far as possible
before falling off. The day she had negotiated the entire fence without
once losing her balance, to return in triumph to the stile where
Timothy awaited her, marked an epoch in her development; for it was the
last stronghold of Timothy's achievements, as should properly
distinguish the boy from the girl, which had thus far held out against
her. And it was quite a long way around the top of that fence; the yard
was large.

There was no gate into the yard. Those who came to call at the Farm on
wheels stopped their vehicle at the end of the avenue outside, by the
worn hitching-post with its iron chain and ring, and climbed an
old-fashioned stile right from the carriage-block to a straight walk of
bricks, laid in a queer criss-cross pattern, that led up to the house.

It was a low-built house, wide-flung, the eaves coming close down over
the second-story windows: and one might almost have stepped from the
windows of the first floor directly out on to the flagged walk that ran
along the whole front. It had a curious