too."

And then with a very little thought, Arethusa knew just what was wrong
with her home-coming. It was Timothy.

Timothy, who had always been a part of things for her ever since she
could remember, was not there to greet her. Timothy had gone off to a
dance and let her come home alone. Timothy, who had always said that he
cared more about Arethusa than anyone else in the world, had not seemed
to care about her coming back to the Farm. Not in the older, happier
days would he have done such a thing as this. And it was well
calculated to hurt when she was already so miserable. But then maybe he
had not known she was to come; her decision had been so sudden. This
might explain.

"Did Timothy know I was coming home to-day?" she asked after a bit,
rather timidly.

Miss Eliza snorted. "He most certainly did. I telephoned him myself,
this morning, to let him know. That's how I happen to know where he is!
You did something to Timothy, Arethusa, when he was in the City to see
you. He hasn't been a bit the same since he came home. Gallivanting
around with those flip hussies in town! His mother's real worried about
him. And he just's running himself thin!"

She would have pursued the subject further, had not Miss Asenath, with
gentle diplomacy, interrupted such pursuit. She did not feel as if she
could listen to Miss Eliza and Arethusa wrangle over Timothy when the
child had just barely got home, after being away so long.

But Arethusa would not have wrangled. She could not have wrangled with
Miss Eliza over anything in the world, much less Timothy. She wondered
who those girls in town were that he was going to see; Timothy had
always declared very emphatically his dislike of the town girls. But
she wondered to herself, without asking anybody any questions.

Miss Eliza's sharp eyes watched her niece. She noticed those unusual
dark circles under Arethusa's eyes, circles which most certainly were
not there when the girl went away; and this strange quietness with
which she had come back to them Miss Eliza did not like a bit. The
tongue of the Arethusa of three months ago would have gone like a bell
clapper under circumstances such as these. And Miss Eliza, who for all
her sharp manner and her scolding tongue, loved her niece in her own
way as much as either Miss Asenath or Miss Letitia, suddenly wished
that she had not let Arethusa make her visit to Lewisburg. She left the
sitting-room abruptly and bustled out to the back