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 int