idled 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 he